


Water on Mars - Spacedogs Week 2015

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Category: Adam (2009), Charlie Countryman (2013)
Genre: Angst, Bathing, Bottom Adam, Bottom Nigel, Break Up, Cuddles, Dirty Talk, Established Relationship, Exploring, Ficlet Collection, Fluff, Jealousy, M/M, New Kinks, Panic Attacks, Possessiveness, Riding, Rough Sex, Sexting, Sickfic, Sleepy Sex, Spacedogs, Sweet Sex, Synesthesia, Top Adam, Top Nigel, Toys, Vibrators, Video Chat, Voyeurism, blindfolding, originals on tumblr, petnames, use of drugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-13
Updated: 2015-10-13
Packaged: 2018-04-26 07:13:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4995124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of drabbles written by us for Spacedogs week! The originals can be found <a href="http://wwhiskeyandbloodd.tumblr.com/tagged/wb4spacedogs">on our tumblr</a>, and we highly recommend you check them out because you get to meet all the awesome prompters as well!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Water on Mars - Spacedogs Week 2015

FINISHED PROMPTS

 

**Spacedogs week is finally heeeeere! Prompt for Midnighters: Nigel buys Adam one of those space bath bombs and they take a bath together. Thank you, darlings!**

“It smells.”

Nigel opens his mouth on reflex but doesn’t have anything to fill the space between his lips as Adam watches him from the bathroom doorway. Nigel’s brow knits, and he brings the little folded paper bag to his nose. “How can you fucking smell it from there?”

“How can you not smell it right in your hand?”

“A lifetime of fucking brutality against my nose, sweetheart. It smells like - I don’t know. Blue.”

“It’s artificial floral fragrance.”

“And this is a hot bath and I got you this fucking thing so just get in. You’re not allergic to it, are you?” Nigel snorts. “No, you’re fucking not. And the lady said - no. Never fucking mind what the lady said. Fucking trust me, sparrow, and get in the fucking bath.”

Without room for argument, Nigel stands from the edge of the tub, fishing out the powdery pressed sphere of smell and color from its packet. Brooking no argument, he opens an arm for Adam - bare and beautiful and pale - to step past. Nigel is equally bare, far less fucking lovely, though, all hair and scars and whipcord muscle.

Adam sighs and goes, stepping into the just-too-hot water and sinking into it, arms wrapped around his knees. He waits, watching Nigel where he stands, holding the thing that stinks like chemicals. He watches the smile, the delight in bringing them something new to try. Adam has learned, over the months and months together, to just trust Nigel with some things.

Strange-smelling being one of them, apparently.

“Okay,” Nigel says, setting a hand against the edge of the tub. “Watch.”

The little ball is tossed into the water and lands with a muffled thunk against the bottom of the tub. For a moment, nothing happens, it sits there in front of Adam. He gently nudges it with his toe, and then it begins to fizz. Not in a way that is frightening, just unusual.

“Nigel, it’s -”

“Just watch, darling.”

So Adam does. He watches as the fizz gives way to color, a deep purple with swirls of blue and pink throughout, little silver motes floating atop the water. Before him unfurls a galaxy. Not a real one, of course, but one that grows before his eyes in the hot bath water. Adam watches, motionless and wide-eyed, as the smell fills the room and the sky fills the water.

“Nigel,” he says softly, turning his head up to look at him, finding a ready smile there, in the corners of narrowed eyes. “You got me the stars.”

"I promised you I would, didn't I, darling?"

Leaning in to share a kiss between them, Nigel steps into the bath facing Adam, and settles to sit with legs spread to either side of him. Not once does he break the kiss, and he's pretty goddamn proud of that, a smile curving between them. The smell isn't so strong now, shifting to an indigo purple and lightening to red, as the water around them glints and darkens.

Silvered sparkles cling to Adam's skin like stardust, sharing space with his pale freckles when he drags a hand across his cheeks and smiles. Grasping his legs, eyes wide with wonder as to how Adam manages to be even more beautiful every fucking day, Nigel drags his angel into his lap. It's entirely fitting that Adam resembles the universe - he's always been Nigel's everything.

**Hi! I have a prompt for Midnighters verse. Their neighbors complain about the sex noises almost 24/7. Happy spacedogs week!**

“Adam’s always been such a nice boy. You know, sometimes there would be a ruckus, but nothing to get annoyed over. I mean, you know what his poor father had to deal with, and that boy was trying, truly. So a little bit of noise was never a problem, we are understanding people, you know, not barbarians. But this… this is unacceptable.”

“I think it’s the grunting that gets me the most. It’s just so… deep. And masculine and low. You always know they’re about to reach a peak when that starts. And it’s… it’s disruptive, if I’m honest. It makes studying really… really… really hard. Excuse me.”

"Maybe if they just moved the bed away from the wall a little? Maybe that would help?"

"I get it. I do. Everyone's got that phase when they first move in together when they fuck like rabbits. I'm not mad about that - live and let live, right? But it's been three goddamn years and every night it's the same thing. Sometimes twice a night. Adam's young but the other one sure isn't, I don't know how they keep it up. I mean, y'know. The sex, not their -"

"I've never been happier in my life to have a hearing aid. It means I can turn it off."

"You should have heard them the other night. Nigel - I met him down in the basement doing laundry - well, Nigel's got a new trick. Now it's not just him talking dirty, no, now he's got sweet Adam doing it too. Let me tell you, I used to babysit that boy, and hearing him beg to have his - you know, his bottom - licked is enough to send me to church on Sunday."

“I think it’s awesome. I’m actually kinda jealous. Wish my boyfriend had that kind of stamina, you know?”

“I did make a noise complaint to 311 once, I remember. This lovely young man came by. Very polite, very sweet. And he went up, I watched him go. The sounds stopped, of course, but when he came down he was white as a sheet and very quiet. He told me that he didn’t know how to word the claim for the department to take back with him, but he assured me that he gave them both a stern talking to.”

“You think they’ll let me join in? I mean, three’s a party right?”

 

**Midnighters Prompt: What is Adam's favourite physical trait or detail regarding Nigel?**

Nigel has noticed that in moments of quiet, when Adam wants to do nothing at all but lay near him and touch, he compares their hands. It always starts slow, a spreading of his comparably little fingers against Nigel’s own, palm to palm, blue eyes tracing the outline of their hands together. Then he will bend a finger to feel skin move against skin, smooth against rough, until all fingers are folded together.

This fascination with hands has never been explained to Nigel, nor has he ever asked about it. Adam’s just always done it. Slow and careful, almost sleepy in how deliberate he is in exploring Nigel’s hands that he knows so well. Nigel is careful not to press back or to offer more; he doesn’t interlock their fingers prematurely or squeeze when they slip together. As he reads, as he watches a match, as Adam lays against his chest and their palms press warm, Nigel likes to think of himself as a mirror.

He doesn’t move out of step.

He doesn’t use more force or less.

He only responds to each cue that he now knows by heart, letting Adam guide him and responding as Adam desires. The match quiets to a hum in his head; he reads the same sentence over and over and still doesn’t grasp its meaning. But every breath that lifts Adam’s chest and every fingertip that traces down Nigel’s hand and every satin-soft sweep of skin against his own calloused hands is like a thunderclap of sensation, sparking pink and gold and violet.

They don’t need to talk, then. They just keep touching, fingertips to knuckles and nails and palms and wrists, Adam turning Nigel’s hands over and back again to look at them, study him like something precious and wonderful - because that is how he feels when Adam looks at him. That hasn’t changed.

Nigel could ask him why he does this, he would pull his hand gently away and watch Adam instead, but he doesn’t. Just once in a while he catches Adam’s fingers gently with his own and turns his hand to kiss the palm to make him smile. And then he lets him explore his hands again. Hands that hold and comfort, adore and protect. Hands that will always find Adam, no matter how dark the night is around them.

**Spacedogs weeks: Midnighters I always want more of that naughty Adam. Maybe he discovers a new kink? Docking perhaps.**

“No.”

“Nigel -”

“Fucking no, Adam. No. I’ve seen some weird shit but this… this is fucking bizarre.” Nigel draws a hand through his hair and then folds his arms across his chest. Then he seeks for a cigarette from the pack in his front pocket to set between his lips. “It looks fucking weird.”

“The men on the video seemed to really enjoy it -”

“Of course they fucking did, darling, they’re paid to!”

Adam bites his lip and tries to hide a smile that way, watching Nigel fret and twitch like a caged animal over sex, of all things. First time for everything, he supposes. In truth, Adam finds it much more endearing than annoying that there is something Nigel is nervous about where Adam is not. In regard to sex, of all things.

“It’s like one penis giving the other a hug,” Adam ventures. “Hugs are nice.”

“Fucking Christ,” Nigel whispers around his cigarette, eyes wide and lighter flickering. He finally notices it, thoughts snapped back to ignite his smoke, which he nearly can’t do for shaking his head so much. “People do all kinds of fucking awful things for money, Adam, just because they film it doesn’t mean -”

“I want to.”

Nigel nearly snaps his cigarette between his fingers, gaze cutting sharp to the kid who watches him with lifted chin and raised brow. “So fucking what?”

“So you promised me if there was ever, ‘anything in the fucking world or universe or galaxy’ - even though galaxies are contained within the universe, not the other way around - that I could have it.” He strides closer, step by step, and plucks the cigarette from between Nigel’s lips to replace it with his own in a chaste, tidy little kiss. “It’s just sex, Nigel.”

Nigel can’t argue with that. He can’t argue about fucking galaxies or what he promised or Adam fucking Raki. He clutches to his cigarette like a lifeline as slender fingers twine with his own and tug him towards the bedroom.

**// I just want sad af spacedogs, kill my muse please! XD**

Everyone has a breaking point.

For Adam, the hairline fractures formed over months and months. Small annoyances that disrupted his day, upsets to his schedule to accommodate a man who less fit into his space like a missing piece and more as a bull in a china shop. Fractures left unrepaired split into cracks.

Days ticked by and affection became routine, practiced and perfectly executed but no longer exciting, like watching a pair of dancers perform their routine again and again; at one point the spark of joy just goes away. Not stifled maybe. If they’re lucky. Just dimmed.

Routine became annoyance. Too much drinking. Too many drugs. Cigarette smoke lingering in an empty house between hollow walls. The television on too loud at night, the words that once sent shivers down Adam’s spine now did little more than wet his skin with the hot breath that carried them.

The little sparrow no longer looked up at the call of his name.

The man who had held him in the palm of his hand seemed to stifle him into a cage of his fingers, squeezing too hard until -

Until.

And for Nigel, it took only three words and one breath for him to crumble:

“I’m done, Nigel.”

Everyone has a breaking point.

 

**Spacedogs week, yay! May I ask for some Midnighter's timestamp? Maybe Nigel takes Adam for a walk at Central Park, the little sparrow needs to strech up sometimes!**

Adam is many things. His clever mind syncs thoughts together with blinding speed, skimming past those systems that don’t fit neatly into his patterns of thought. His prowess in computing reflects this in flurries of keystrokes and hours on end moving drugs and guns and mules as if on a chessboard. He is strong and stable, funny when he wants to be, and curiously charming.

He is also fucking adorable.

Nigel watches him as he tromps ahead through the leaves along the path, all manner of crisp brown and auburn orange. The air smells of firewood smoke, though it’s illegal to burn anything in the park, and Nigel knows that there’s no campfire nearby. It’s Adam, the sight of whom smells like home and tastes like roses, bundled up in his big coat and his scarf up to his nose and his hat down to his eyes and his mittens - his fucking mittens.

Nigel breathes in deep the autumn warmth, and it unspirals a grey sigh that clouds the air and fades. “Where are you taking me, darling?”

Adam just looks over his shoulder, eyes narrowed in a smile, and keeps walking. He is overdressed for the weather, but he likes to keep warm, and the coat he wears is light, feels just like he’s enveloped in a hug, and he likes it. He pushes his hands into his pockets and then pulls them free again, feet parsing through the leaves before him. He catalogues the colors, tries to give them names and finds he can only name a few.

He keeps walking, keeps looking. Because he knows that, as every year, it will be here. It has been since he was a little boy, and it has been there since. He doesn’t know who makes it or how it comes to be in the first place, but the mound of leaves he sights several feet away from the path always makes him smile.

He veers off the path, turns to see if Nigel is following, and with a grin starts to jog, then starts to run, and with a shriek of joy he launches himself into the pile of leaves that is so deep he almost disappears within it.

Nigel’s eyes widen, a glance sent down each direction of the path to see if anyone’s watching, but there’s no one there on a weekday morning, so deep into the park. His boots crackle leaves beneath as he approaches the pile, hands buried in his pockets. Nigel’s raised brow gives way to a grin as Adam emerges halfway, and rolls down the collapsing pile of leaves.

Adam is fucking adorable. And Nigel can only curse as a mittened hand stretches for his own, and he finds himself buried beneath the leaves with his little sparrow.

 

**This isn't even really a prompt because i really have no idea. But blindfolding. Please. Even if it's just a little scene in any fic. Just blindfolding**

It starts out as a game in bed, when Adam presses his hand gently over Nigel’s eyes to close them. Keeping them closed, he asks him what he can sense. Adam whispers words against Nigel’s skin, his fingers covering his eyes the entire time, and Nigel tells him that they are pale yellow, and that when Adam laughs they burn a beautiful firey orange and fade to soft prickles against his skin.

“What about now?” Adam asks, drawing his fingers tickling down Nigel’s furry chest. “Is it a color or a smell?”

Nigel’s lips draw up in a lazy sort of snarl, thoughtful, nose wrinkling. He tilts his head as if to unseat Adam’s fingers but they remain pressed gently against his eyes, following his movements. He can feel every hair as it’s stroked over by Adam’s other hand, tugged and pushed and each one singing like a plucked fiddle string directly to his cock.

“Like matches,” Nigel says. “That first - you know, the fucking pop.”

“Sulfurous.”

“Hot,” Nigel agrees, grinning a little.

“You’re getting hard,” Adam points out, smiling, and draws his nails a little harsher over Nigel’s skin. “You like it.” 

Another quiet little snarl is his answer and Adam bites his lip, breathing a little laugh that he tries to stifle.

“That smells like summer,” Nigel tells him, bringing one hand up to press to Adam’s side, bare and warm where he wriggles against him. “Like those fucking wildflowers that grow every which way.”

“Sweet?”

“No,” Nigel considers. It isn’t sweet, there is a ripe sort of bitterness to it, but a very welcome one. It smells like life and earth and Adam. He tastes like the first fruit of spring, not yet full and flush, but heady with promise and a delicious tang all his own.

“You keep saying I’m sweet,” Adam wheedles, smile wider still.

“When you fucking want to be,” laughs Nigel. It’s easy for them to envy the other their manner of thought - Adam with his swift-thinking reason and efficiency, Nigel’s ungrounded sensation and emotion. Both has what the other lacks, and both are willing to share. Nigel stretches upward and a kiss parts his lips to allow Adam’s tongue to sweep between them, and the older man growls delight as Adam moves away again and spans his free hand lower still.

“And now?”

Nigel can only laugh, because there aren’t enough words in the world.

**Happy Spacedogs Week! I have a prompt for Midnighters verse. Adam and Nigel are stuck in a tunnel in a crowded subway car for an uncomfortably long time. Adam is starting to freak and Nigel has to comfort him.**

_We are being held momentarily due to train traffic ahead of us._

Nigel snorts. “Fucking fifteenth time we’ve heard that, how many fucking trains can there be.”

He stretches his elbow deliberately into the shoulder of the man beside him, widening his stance and his shoulders to keep his space. Every adjustment made by anyone on the overcrowded train sets off little huffs of displeasure, soft curses, and settling into place that then unsettles the person beside. Nigel can’t imagine what fucking possessed him to take the train, let alone with Adam, for whom Nigel grabbed a seat by bodily placing himself in the path of another when they boarded.

Nigel stands above him, wrists draped against the overhead rail, his little sparrow watching upward, crammed tight between two older women on the orange-and-yellow seats. Before Adam says a word, Nigel can taste tinfoil on his tongue. He frowns.

“What’s the matter, baby?”

Adam just takes a breath and holds it, fingers tapping a quick rhythm against his arm, first once or twice, then with deliberate precision - Nigel knows he’s counting every single tap against the other. Fibonacci, most likely. Nigel has heard Adam meticulously record that sequence before, against his own arm, against the table, against Nigel’s chest -

“There’s too many people,” Adam whispers. “And too little air. And the train isn’t moving and people are getting angry and -” He swallows, lifting bright eyes to Nigel who keeps the weight of most of the train off of him by bending himself a certain way. “I lost count,” he admits, biting his lip, fingers flexing before he starts to tap again.

Nigel twists a sinuous snap of his body to nudge aside the assholes to his right and left. He can’t very well yank the old ladies out of their seats to make room for Adam, but he can open up the rest of the space above him, so he does. Folding his arms against the bar, brow resting on them, he watches Adam and offers him a slight smile, filling his little sparrow’s sight with himself.

“Just look here,” Nigel says, his tone low and exceedingly patient, considering how close he is to tearing down the speaker from the roof of the fucking subway car if they play that fucking announcement again. The woman to Adam’s left shifts her bag in her lap, but when Adam glances to her, his numbers upset again, Nigel touches his chin to turn him back and raise his eyes once more. “Here,” he murmurs. “Let me hear you count, baby.”

“But people -”

“There’s no one fucking here,” Nigel tells him, as certain as if he were declaring the sky as blue. “No one but us, darling, now count for me.”

Adam makes a sound, a fussy warm little thing, and swallows, keeping his eyes on Nigel. He watches the familiar smile, the narrowing of his eyes, and he tries to time his pulse to the steady slow beat of the one he can see at Nigel's throat.

"One," he murmurs. "One, two, three, five, eight -"

He takes a breath and keeps going, watching just Nigel, feeling the rest of the people slow fade to a hum of white noise and breath. With Nigel he feels safe. He knows he can trust his promises. He’s high into his count when the subway finally jerks to life again, and it startles him from his rhythm and into a laugh. Nigel grins, easily keeping up the weight of others as they sway against him, and as if there’s truly no one there at all but he and Adam, he leans low and touches a kiss to his head. There are still many stops until their own, but for now, at least they’re moving. Breathing. At ease, so long as they’re together.

“Start again,” Nigel tells Adam with a grin. “See how high you can get before we’re home, sparrow.”

**I know it's cliché, but could you please write something about Adam being in an accident and Nigel worrying about him and waiting until he gets to see his spaceman again in the hospital? Or maybe the same scenario with reversed roles?**

_Stupid. It was fucking stupid. Don't come._

I want to see you.

_You ducking hate hospitals._  
Fucking  
Stupid phone 

I don't enjoy them but you're hurt and I want to see you. I would want to see you anyway, of course, because I love you but you're hurt.

_Nothing you can do for me that the doctors can't._

_..._

_I didn't mean that. But I don't want you to have to bundle up because I'm a ducking idiot._  
I ducking hate this phone  
Fuck  
Fucking 

You haven't even told me what happened.

_I got stabbed and I'm fine._

You're not fine, you're in the hospital. I'm getting dressed, please forgive delays in answering. Who stabbed you?

_It doesn't matter._

It does matter. Will they do it again?

_They fucking better not._

Who did it, Nigel? With our business mostly digital now, with few reasons for you to go out and meet anyone in person, I’m surprised you got stabbed by someone. You shouldn’t have. No one should, really, but that’s not the point.

_Adam. How did you fucking type that so fast._

Would you like me to dismantle another underground operation?

_Darling, no. It’s not like that._

I could, you know I could, it won’t take me long at all.

_Duck, Adam._  
Duck.  
Fuck. Fucking phone and it’s fucking predictive texting, I fucking stabbed myself. 

_…_

_I was doing something in the kitchen and the fucking knife slipped and I went to fucking catch it and…_  
Caught it.  
Wrong.  
Duck. 

You stabbed yourself because you caught the knife wrong.

_Shut up._

How did you even manage that? I can’t imagine how you would manage to do that, it’s somewhat incredible.

_Don’t you fucking laugh at me. I’m in pain._

I’m not laughing.

_You’re fucking laughing, I know you are._

I might be laughing a little bit. But you managed to stab yourself with a knife you caught with your belly. Somehow. You know, it is funny. Even though you did get stabbed and ended up in the hospital, it is very silly.

_Are you going to visit me or what, darling?_

I thought you didn’t want to be visited.

_Adam._

I thought you understood I didn’t like hospitals and bundling up would be a chore and I would have to take the cab there, and you know I hate cabs too.

_ADAM_

“You get very worked up when you’ve done something silly and refuse to admit you have,” Adam says, leaning in the doorway and watching his wayward lover, bent over his phone with his free arm across his stomach. “But you did do something silly and you did get hurt, and I love you and so I’m here. After facing a detestable cab ride and the unpleasant smells of the hospital. Past visiting hours, you know. I’m here.”

Nigel just watches him, this remarkable creature that for some ungodly reason loves him so much. After a minute he sets his phone aside and holds his hand out, and with a smile, Adam comes closer and climbs into bed beside him.

**Spacedogs week: midnighters I just realized that Id love to see an incredibly sleepy Adam consent to Nigel to doing naughty things to him while he lies in bed. (I recall a vague ref to this early on, when Nigels strung out on coke in the wee hours)**

For as silent as he imagines his stalking to be, akin to a great cat slipping sleek through the darkness, the creak of springs betrays him. Nigel grimaces as the bed sinks beneath his weight. With slow shifts of muscle he slinks closer on all fours to the lump that snores softly, curled unsuspecting beneath his heavy blanket. Adam stirs just a little, and with a fussy noise, folds tighter onto his side.

It’s fucking creepy to just sneak up on someone in bed. Nigel knows that, but he isn’t opposed to it, either. Then again, it’s creepier still to sneak up on them when you’re rock fucking hard. Nigel grasps his cock as if to quiet its complaining ache, and he whispers Adam’s name. No response. Beneath the indigo blanket, the color of the night sky when the sun first sets, Nigel lays on his side and wriggles closer, but doesn’t yet touch.

“Adam,” he whispers, instead, his voice too loud in the silent room and too quiet, drowned out by his own throbbing pulse. “Angel, are you awake?”

A sigh, a mumbled word Nigel can’t hear and then Adam’s breathing falls to soft rhythm again. Nigel curses low, and presses his head against the back of Adam’s to at least have that contact, if nothing fucking else.

“No,” Adam mumbles after a while. “‘m not awake. ‘S okay though.”

“Baby."

Adam just makes another little noise and wriggles back against Nigel, enough that Nigel is fairly fucking sure that Adam can feel the bulge between his legs, enough that Nigel is fairly fucking sure, when Adam arches his back and rubs his bottom against it, that he fucking knows. Adam makes himself comfortable here, too, and when Nigel hazards a peek over the slowly rising and falling shoulder of his little sparrow he can see Adam smiling.

Adam fucking Raki.

“I love you so fucking much,” Nigel murmurs. He skims Adam’s shirt collar aside with a hooked finger, and trapping the warmth of his breath, sinks an open-mouthed kiss against Adam’s shoulder.

“I know.”

Nigel doesn’t need to press inside him; it’s enough to feel the heat of his body and the drowsy press of his ass back against Nigel’s cock. It’s enough to know that Adam wants him there, wants him close, wants him to feel good against him. Maybe it’s not the ferocious mating fuck that he imagined when he was first pulled in here by his cock, but that’s okay. He’s not a fucking animal, after all, and Adam’s easy and unconscious shifts against his body ease him into a low groan of release, and a heavy, peaceful sleep.

**Spacedogs prompt: Adam, Nigel and Pumpkin carving**

“Seems like a waste of a good fucking squash.”

Adam lifts his eyes, brows raised beneath mahogany curls of hair. “You don’t eat the rind.”

“But all the guts, you should cook with that. It’s just fucking sitting there,” Nigel says, regarding the silvery metal bowl on the kitchen floor beside him, full with strings of seeds and auburn squash scrapings. Knife in hand, he looks back to the gutted pumpkin with no small degree of animosity towards it. There’s no other way to properly approach cutting something apart. It would be a fucking disservice to treat it lightly.

“It won’t bite you,” Adam tells him, and Nigel gives him a dry look.

“I fucking know that, darling, I’ve just never understood the reason for all this. America makes Halloween into a fucking shitshow party.”

“Well, you know it started as -”

“Sparrow, no. Not today. Just… just tell me what to do with it.”

“You’re supposed to carve a picture into it.”

“Carve a fucking picture.”

Adam settles to his knees, across the hollowed squash from Nigel, and rests his hands on his legs. He won’t touch it, the texture of the guts and grime is unpleasant to him, so he asked Nigel to help. Nigel, lovestruck idiot that he is, took up the knife and the gourd without a second thought.

Now he’s having second, third, and fucking fourth thoughts.

But Adam watches him, blue eyes wide and expectant, and Nigel can only ask, “What am I supposed to fucking carve in it?”

“A face, maybe. Or anything, really.”

“Let me try that again, darling, what the fuck do you want me to carve in it?”

Adam considers him a moment and chews his lip. His father had always carved unusual things into pumpkins with him, sometimes spacemen, sometimes planets. Sometimes smiling faces with two buck teeth.

"Hold on," Adam scrambles up and disappears behind Nigel, bare feet clicking on the floor until they hush over carpet instead. When he returns, it is with a marker pen.

"Can you hold it up?" He asks, and smiles when Nigel does. He draws just dots, thick ones, with thin lines between to join them in unusual patterns. As Nigel turns the pumpkin, Adam draws, until they cover the entirety of It. 

"There," Adam smiles. "Carve that, please. All the way through on the dots and partially on the lines."

“Partially? Fucking partially, he fucking says,” Nigel snorts. With his lips curled high in focus, he gives Adam a dubious look and drags the pumpkin into his lap. He is good with knives, that’s not news to anyone, but using them for craft rather than shanking someone is a rare occurrence. He complains that it’s not making anything, that it’s like connect the dots with a nonsensical fucking pattern, but he continues on from point to point. Each dot is curve free with a plug of pumpkin rind left behind; each connecting line is carefully scraped straight, not deep enough to punch through but only to reveal white.

When it’s all done, Nigel’s too fucking tired to care about the pumpkin guts or anything more than getting a beer, but he watches sidelong as Adam unfolds himself and carries the pumpkin to the table. The bottlecap clatters to the counter as Adam works, extending a hand.

“Lighter, please.”

Nigel produces it, brow raised.

Adam stands on his toes to light the candle within and sets the top of the pumpkin back when he's finished. He looks delighted, and with a happy sound, goes to turn off the main light In the room, so only the candle burns through the marks carved on the pumpkin. 

"What -"

"Look," Adam grins, wrapping his arms around Nigel's middle, as constellations flicker to life all across the pumpkin they carved together. "We brought the stars to New York."

**Spacedogs week prompt! Anything to do with size difference. Adam is so lovely, and while not tiny, is much smaller than Nigel, who I'm sure fucking appreciates it a lot.**

"You know that this isn't an argument. This is just you picking me up -" Adam shrieks, surprised and delighted at one, and clings to Nigel's legs. "- and holding me upside down. Put me down!"

Nigel plucks his cigarette from between his lips, leaving a trail of smoke in his wake like a fucking steam engine. He keeps his arm wrapped around the back of Adam’s knees, little sparrow slung over his shoulder. “You’re right. It’s not a fucking argument,” Nigel agrees, taking another drag. “It’s the fucking end of an argument.”

“You didn’t let me explain,” Adam huffs, his voice strained. “I was going to tell you -”

“But I win.”

Adam tries to laugh, but upside down it’s hard, and he brings down his fist against Nigel’s calf instead. The older man doesn’t flinch, but instead makes his disapproval known in a low growl and a cloud of smoke. He makes sure to bounce Adam a little as he walks towards the bedroom.

“You don’t win, this isn’t how someone wins.”

“Except I just did.”

“Nigel!”

“Adam!” Nigel exclaims in return. He deposits his cigarette in the tray beside the bed and turns, dropping Adam to the mattress. But before he can scramble to right himself, Nigel crawls atop him, pinning him to the sheets, arms and legs to either side of his little bird as Adam laughs again, helpless to the kisses that befall him.

"Stop!"

"No."

Adam laughs and wraps his arms around Nigel's neck, holding on tight.

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Okay. You win the argument that you are taller and can manhandle me but that wasn't the argument at hand."

"You’re going to eat whatever I fucking make for you,” Nigel snorts against Adam’s neck, chasing it with a firm kiss, “but I'll cede that."

"You'll cede next time too."

"To what?"

"Our next argument. That I will host sitting on the counter so you can't take advantage."

Nigel just grins, eyes hooding as Adam’s kiss twists against his tattoo. “Too bad you’ll need me to give you a fucking lift up there, hm?”

**Prompt: Spacedogs and petnames (I am a sucker for petnames)**

“How do you feel about ‘big eagle’?”

Nigel nearly drowns in his own coffee, fisting his hand against his lips . He shakes his head as he tries to swallow, or at least waits for the coffee to drain back down from his nose. “No,” he finally gasps, tears in his eyes from suppressed laughter and a fountain of coffee that would have accompanied. “Why? Why would you?”

“Because you call me little sparrow,” Adam says.

Still, he diligently draws a line through the name in his little notepad, braced against his knees. Bare feet curled against the edge of the couch, Nigel watches him a moment more from where he sits at the kitchen table, cleaning one of his handguns. “But there’s a reason for that, darling.”

“I know. Because you say that I have delicate little bird bones and a sweet song, even though I don’t sing and my bones are of normal density.”

Nigel’s smile widens as he takes up a fresh scrap of cloth. “What else?”

“Bear,” Adam offers next, chewing his lip before he raises his eyes, almost careful, to see what response this name draws. He catches Nigel blinking at him, amused, and licks his lips to explain. “It’s a common colloquial term for men with abundant body hair. And I like your hair, it’s warm to nuzzle. I think it suits you.”

“Do you, darling?” Nigel purrs, moving the cloth into position with deft fingers. He watches Adam with narrowed eyes just to see him blush to that beautiful smoky color he gets when he is just a little aroused and a little embarrassed.

“And I like bears,” Adam adds. “The animals. Not the men. But I like you. You’re the only -” he hums and stops that train of thought, cheeks darkening further still as Nigel watches him. “Bears are beautiful creatures, they’re incredibly smart, they’re incredibly resilient and protective.”

“So you think I’m a bear, little sparrow?”

Adam grins and bites his lip, circling the word on his list to keep. “In every sense of the word,” he confirms.

**Hey, how you girls are doing? I love the work you two do, it's really impressive. May I take a suggestion for the Spacedog boys? Nigel buys Adam a vibrator for when he's away, and one of those days Adam chats with him via Skype and well, it's a private show for our beloved loud and rude man. Hope you girls are okay and have a nice week!**

“Is it on? Is it working? Baby, are you there? Fucking computer, there’s a fucking delay or something. I can’t fucking hear a fucking -”

_“Oh.”_

Nigel’s gaze flicks quickly up again. From the bottom of the screen curves a sinuous, pale body. Even in the low lights, Nigel can make out Adam’s form, as familiar to him as breathing. On his stomach, Adam twists his hips towards the ceiling, and another little whimper jerks Nigel’s cock taut. It’s as though he’s sitting at the foot of the bed, watching him perform.

Nigel nearly catches his dick in his zipper in his hurry to get his fucking pants off.

“It feels really good,” Adam moans quietly, his body shuddering as he reaches for his computer, shifting it just enough that when the camera falls to focus again, Nigel can see his little sparrow more clearly. Bent nearly double, face smearing against the blankets and eyes hardly open in his pleasure. He shudders again, another helpless moan pulled from him as he grits his teeth, and with a laugh Adam opens his eyes again.

“I missed you today,” he murmurs.

Nigel bites his bottom lip so hard it hurts, letting it scrape from between his teeth with a grunt. He spreads the pooling precome from the head of his cock along its length, wrist turning in a slow, tight screwing motion from tip to base. He can see a flash of black in Adam’s fingers as he bends his back deeper, eyes focused on Nigel through his screen. The vibrator hums as he withdraws it, and mutes, buzzing deeper, as he twists it back inside himself with a whimper.

“I miss you every fucking second,” Nigel breathes. “Perfect angel, look at you. Fucking naughty little bird, show me again. Tell me how hard you are.”

Adam shivers, squirms and spreads his legs wider in increments before using his free hand to sit up. A whimper pulls high and needy as he sits on his heels, pushing the vibrator a little deeper as he does. His cock sits erect, dripping down to his thighs.

“I’m really hard,” Adam whispers, ducking his head and biting his lip, but he doesn’t touch his cock. He clenches his muscles around the toy and his entire body shivers in pleasure. “Are you hard?”

Adam smiles a little as Nigel’s voice cuts through their feed in a razorblade curse hissed sharp. Nigel’s fingers drip sticky ribbons of come, glistening in his yellowed hotel room light, and when he can lift his eyes to the angel fucking himself on screen again, he can’t help but laugh.

“No, darling,” Nigel sighs. “Not anymore.”

**Spacedogs prompt for you. What about Adam and Nigel dancing? Formal dancing, a waltz of something of the like. Either at home for fun, or at a formal event, your choice. I just think it would be cute to see Nigel riled up, because he doesn't know the steps, and Adam leading.**

“I learned once,” Adam says. “A long time ago, my dad thought it was a good idea, and it was fun for me. I got to learn through movement and action, allowing me to realize that although I wasn’t a kinesthetic learner, I liked the repetitive and predictable motions. You’re a kinesthetic learner,” Adam adds, taking Nigel’s hands again and setting one to his shoulder, just beneath the blade, the other he clasps in his own. “So this should be really easy for you.”

“What the fuck is kino-”

“Kinesthetic learning is learning by doing something.”

“How the fuck else can you know how to do something?” Nigel asks, one hand spreading against Adam’s back. He can feel Adam’s heartbeat there, but the warmth of their palms pressed together and uplifted distracts him.

“Study,” Adam says. “Learning by reading or lectures -”

“I can’t learn shit that way,” Nigel snorts. “I can’t concentrate.”

“I know,” smiles Adam. “So follow me.”

Nigel just curses, a soft breath of a thing, and ducks his head to look at their feet. He knows he will step on Adam, he knows it, and he feels the need to preemptively warn him, but Adam takes a step forward first.

So, on instinct, Nigel takes a step back. 

“There,” Adam laughs. “Like that. If I lead, you follow. Where I step forward, you step back, when I step back you step forward. It’s just like walking.”

“Doesn’t look like fucking walking when you watch it on TV,” Nigel mumbles.

“Because you adjust the walking to rhythm, then, and it becomes a dance. But it starts as walking,” Adam tells him.

“Stupid way to walk.” Nigel’s complaint is quiet, though, relatively lacking in rancor as he watches Adam’s feet. A little noise draws his attention to the kid in front of him, though, and when Adam smiles, Nigel feels as if every stride they share is a little easier.

“Watch me, not the floor.”

“How will I know when you’re going to step?”

“How do you know when I’m going to ejaculate? Or when someone wants to fight? You can read expressions and body language. I can’t see it, but I know that you can.”

Nigel stares at Adam a moment, but in his shock, their steps sync into a smooth rhythm. It happens without intention, without deliberation - a natural joining of their bodies, one always seeking to be near the other. Nigel’s smile widens slowly, and he draws Adam a little closer against him.

“I saw dancers once, in Argentina. It looked like they were fucking, but the most beautiful fucking you’ve ever seen. Maybe we could do that,” he grins, ducking his head to nuzzle against Adam’s hair.

Adam laughs, turning his head to nuzzle him back, and then he hums. “That’s the tango,” he tells him. “It was a dance born of brothels and dark places, sexual and bright and beautiful.”

Nigel groans softly and parts his lips to kiss against Adam’s temple.

“And earned,” Adam tells him, grinning when Nigel makes a sound of protest. “It’s a dance you earn.”

Nigel considers the words, tilts his head as though in contemplation, and in that warm concentration moves into a gentle turn that Adam leads him into, without realizing he could mess up the steps.

“Then I suppose we’ll have to earn it, darling,” Nigel says, and Adam grins, flexing his fingers against Nigel’s own.

“I suppose we will.”

**AHHHHHH Spacedogs Week!!!!! ok here's the best prompt you'll get all week lol ok so adam is a freshman and nigel is a junior at the same university, they have just started dating and they decide to go on a road trip to test their relationship, cue wackiness and sexy times Lol**

“I’m not getting on that thing,” Adam mumbles, rubbing one arm with the other hand as Nigel loads his bag onto the motorbike, lashing everything down and securing it. “I won’t survive the trip to Miami. I don’t even want to go to Miami.”

“You’ll like Miami, darling,” Nigel assures him, grinning as he shoves his sunglasses higher up to push back his ash-blonde hair. “It’s warm in Miami.”

“It’s also crowded and loud and filled with tourists and bad food and serial killers.”

“Fucking serial killers, Adam?”

“The statistics for killers in Florida alone are -”

“Not important right now, love,” Nigel tells him, lifting Adam’s chin and kissing him softly. “You’ll be with me, safe and sound.”

Adam just mumbles and tries to hide his smile as his boyfriend kisses his temple enough to turn his head. He can’t argue that. But…

“Can’t we just take your car?” He asks.

“No, darling,” Nigel says, slipping Adam’s curls back from his face and settling his helmet on.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s fucking totaled, darling.”

“It’s - you mean that you totaled it,” Adam says, eyes widening as Nigel adjusts the strap beneath his chin. Not too tight, but snug. He’s kissed warmly, Nigel’s tongue pressing softly past his lips, and with a long breath, Nigel only reluctantly turns away.

“I didn’t fucking do it,” he snorts. “It was the asshole in front of me who didn’t move in time.”

“Nigel!”

“Trust me, baby, this will be great. The bike is much easier to fucking control than the fucking car, anyway.”

Adam makes a doubtful little sound and chews the side of his thumb. Nigel watches him before putting on his own helmet and grinning.

“You’re gonna be so distracting, darling, sitting behind me, holding so tight. I’ll get us there safe because I’ll be thinking of how much I want to toss you into bed and have your cock in my mouth.” He watches Adam’s cheeks redden, his eyes widen, and bites his tongue softly. “Or I could teach you to drive, then I know we’ll get there safely.”

Adam just takes a quick breath and holds it, regarding the beast of a machine before them that should - in theory - take them to Florida in one piece. He considers sitting atop it with Nigel behind, he considers actually having control of this thing, and knowing that if he has control, the rest will be okay.

He considers how hard Nigel will get watching Adam ride it confidently.

“Get us there safe and I’ll learn how to ride it in Miami,” Adam tells him.

Nigel grins and grasps Adam by his waist, hoisting him to straddle the bike. Leaning near, a hand on the inside of Adam’s thigh, Nigel kisses him hard and murmurs against his mouth, “When you’re not riding me instead.”

**Hello, girls! I love your works :D Can I have freshman!Adam and Senior!Nigel in the same advanced calculus class? Thank you ^^**

“Adam,” the professor calls, as Adam taps his pen against the little fold out desk before him and concentrates on the space just above the teacher’s left ear. He’s early. Again. And the man is smiling, as he usually does. “A fantastic grade, as usual. You’ve really found your stride in this class.”

Adam just presses his lips together and smiles, tapping his pen a little slower. He moved to the advanced placement class the semester before, and found it much more agreeable than the freshman one he had left. People here care about their study. They care about their own work. And they don’t care that Adam isn’t good at talking to people because mathematics doesn’t call for much communication or group work.

“I think Nigel might have some competition, now that you’re here,” the professor adds, shuffling his papers up as a few more students make their way to their seats.

Adam’s tapping stops. The words rankle him. They squeeze Adam’s innards out of shape as though there’s a fist clenching in his belly. The professor didn’t say that Adam is superior. He didn’t comment on how statistically unlikely it is for a freshman to be in this class at all, let alone vying for the top of it. He taps again, half the speed of before.

“Do you think that he’ll show up today?” Adam asks. “Or will he be here only twenty minutes late this time?”

“I’m here right now,” Nigel says, as their classmates filter into the little lecture room. Brow lifted, he tilts his fingers to their professor, and after making a show of great consideration, Nigel drops into the seat directly behind Adam. Arms folding against the back of his chair, Nigel leans forward, smiling broad as he whispers alarmingly close to the back of Adam’s neck. “Anything you want to talk about, freshman?”

“No, thank you,” Adam mumbles, folding his pencil into his palm and holding onto it like a lifeline. He doesn’t like Nigel this close, he doesn’t like Nigel being his competition in calculus class, he doesn’t like Nigel, period. “I’d like to concentrate on my work instead.”

“Class hasn’t started yet.”

“I read ahead.”

“Did you, darling?”

“Nigel.” The professor raises an eyebrow and shakes his head before returning to prepare for his class. The older boy grins wide, as Adam curls his shoulders higher and tries to hide between them, apparently. Nigel waits a beat, two, and then leans close again, making sure that Adam can feel his arms against his back and the bend of the seat beneath them.

“You know I could teach you a better way to think about it. Visualization and shit,” Nigel murmurs, eyes narrowing in pleasure as a shiver ripples visibly up Adam’s back. “That way you’re not up late all night reading ahead. Free you up to do other things.”

“I like studying,” Adam whispers back. “It calms me and it feels good when I know I’m making the effort to gain knowledge. And I am. And I don’t need your help, thank you, I’m doing very well.” He tenses a little then relaxes, sighing out long before curiosity gets the better of him and he could kick himself for it. “What other things?”

Nigel’s smile widens, unseen. He’s spent the whole semester in awe of the wide-eyed and brazen freshman, curly hair in his face and frumpy sweaters decades older than he is. When coming in late and being boisterous didn’t draw anything more than stiffened shoulders, when focusing on his work to jettison to the top of the class didn’t earn anything more than ire, Nigel knew he had to get creative.

Adam’s chair creaks beneath Nigel’s lean, and when their professor turns towards the white board, Nigel brushes a kiss against the back of Adam’s neck, and hopes it speaks for itself.

**Spacedogs prompt: Adam loves Nigel's scars. When Adam wakes up first, he sometimes lays in bed and makes a mental star-map of Nigel's body, remembering the places where he needs to be tender with Nigel and filing them away in his mind.**

Carl Sagan once said that we are made of starstuff. Hearing that is the closest Adam’s felt to the emotion that others apparently feel for certain songs or poems. A weightlessness, terrifying and thrilling, like when an elevator moves too quickly or a chair tips over backward, and for as long as he can hold that thought, he is suspended in a breathless awe. Their bodies contain all the makings of the stars themselves, iron and carbon and so much more. They live, they burn, they die.

And to Adam, Nigel is more than just a singular star. In him are multitudes, and Adam his astronaut. He is a galaxy that Adam explores and maps in the darkness, alone, and overflowing with wonder.

He knows certain constellations on him now, know that these arrangements of scratches mean he was struck by a splintering piece of wood, and some of the pieces stuck. He knows if he pushes just a little, he can feel one of them, embedded in Nigel’s muscle now, as though it will grow into a tree there.

He knows the one that’s shaped like a mermaid is a burn that Nigel claims is from a crazy ex-girlfriend, but Adam thinks it was something more dire. He’ll never ask, but he always gives that one special attention, kisses all along the length of it, nuzzles when he reaches what he calls the tail. Nigel says he doesn’t see it. But Nigel also doesn’t see Orion when they find him in the sky, just his belt.

Night after night he paints kisses against the stars in a sky that is made just for him. He knows that his affections will do little to make them disappear, but stars are memory and beauty, some carved in pain, others already long gone by the time we see their light. Nigel is a galaxy Adam will never stop exploring.

**Hello. If you have time and you feel like it, could you please write something about how exactly does predatory fauna Nigel ambush Adam in bed after watching nature shows on large cats ambushing unfortunate, smaller fauna? Thank you. Your writing is very precious and I'm very grateful that you two exist.**

In the little bird’s mind, there is no cause for alarm. Though wary by their nature, all creatures are due their rest, and there are few spaces safer than the nest. The little bird has had its supper and preened itself to cleanliness, and beneath a bundle of blankets, now seeks entertainment in the form of a book. At earlier hours, the little bird might have been more alert, but now, an arduous day has taken its toll.

The little bird grows drowsy.

There is no more opportune moment for the cat to approach. On padded, silent feet, his steps whisper across the floor. The air grows still. Lean muscle twitches in anticipation along the predator’s powerful legs, but he forces restraint. It would be premature to strike from such distance as the doorway.

He must come closer if he has any hope in capturing his prey.

The bird ruffles its feathers, enough to comfort itself further in the warm nest before sleep takes it for the evening. The book is set aside with a flutter of pages like tiny wings themselves, and the cat steps closer. Now, this way, the bird, is calm. All is right in the nest and its surrounding environment. It is common for it to fall asleep alone and find its mate near when it wakes.

Closer and closer the large creature stalks, content to wait should the little bird stir again, and waiting until he is certain it will not. Come evening time, come the flutter of paper wings, the bird will be settled. Sure of its safety for the night, beautiful in its vulnerability.

The perfect prey for the perfect predator.

And when he strikes, it is with a flurry of motion. Crying out startled, the bird sounds its alarm but there will be no help for it beneath the cat’s swift paws. It squirms, it struggles, but the predator growls in warning. Teeth bared, the cat finds the tender exposure of his prey’s bared throat, and the little bird cannot do more than succumb.

**Your so generous to take request.. I request that you have a Great October and I think Adam would really like Halloween because he would wear his space suit all day long. Maybe this will inspire you..**

“Where the fuck did you get it?”

“From the back of the closet.”

Nigel’s spoon drips milk into the bowl as he watches Adam maneuver into his chair. The suit is massive, and Adam appears even smaller inside of it. Leaning to allow for the - costume? uniform? what the fuck - to have enough space between himself and the table, Adam pulls his own bowl a little closer, along with the glass of milk that Nigel leaves beside it every morning. He learned his lesson about that early on. Adam hates soggy cereal.

“You’re staring at me.”

“Yeah, I fucking am, angel. Fucking why -”

“It’s Halloween, it’s perfectly normal to dress up on Halloween,” Adam tells him, arranging his spoon just so, his cup of orange juice directly above it like a dotted letter I. “In fact,” he adds, “you’re the one who’s out of place. You’re just wearing your wiener dog shirt again, which you’ve already worn for the last two days.”

“It’s not even fucking noon and you’re in a costume already?”

“It isn’t a costume. It’s a replica Apollo A7L spacesuit, non-functional but modeled after the one that was worn by Buzz Aldrin.”

The tone is so prim, verging on snotty in his authority, that Nigel immediately wonders how he can pry open the not-costume to get to the lovely little body contained within. He slips a hand beneath the table to settle his cock, before returning to his cereal. He is not going to get a fucking boner over Adam wearing a spacesuit. He is not.

Adam wriggles to get comfortable and watches Nigel as he watches him.

“It’s actually remarkably comfortable, considering how bulky it looks. Were I wearing it in space, I wouldn’t feel encumbered.” 

Nigel watches as Adam very carefully pours milk into his cereal and takes up his spoon. He holds it at an odd angle so the sleeves on the spacesuit don’t push his bowl around as he tries to start his breakfast. Nigel says nothing, but his nothing speaks volumes, and with a huffed breath, Adam looks up at him.

“It takes getting used to, on earth, due to gravity and -”

“Darling, if you want to wear your suit, I say go for it,” is all Nigel tells him, taking another mouthful of cereal to crunch between his teeth. “You actually look fucking adorable in it.”

Adam’s cheeks pinken and he keeps his eyes on his food, trying not to smile. “It’s not meant to make me look cute,” he counters, but he doesn’t reject the statement. “It is an important uniform, and a symbol of vital progress mankind has made in space...”

Nigel listens, to the enormous value of the Apollo space program and the remarkable technological achievement of the suit that allowed for research never before imagined and on and on. He listens, through spoonfuls of cereal and little fluttering movements of Adam’s hands and the cinnamon-red sweetness of his excitement. He pays attention. He really fucking does. Even though Adam doesn’t believe he has when Nigel asks, “How do you get it off?”

“It’s not meant to be taken off.”

“Not in space, angel,” Nigel clarifies, standing with his bowl in hand and a tent in his boxers. “In the bedroom.”

**Spacedogs Prompt: Adam gets a tattoo (of course it has to do with space) and Nigel holds his hand when he's getting it done.**

“It’s very loud,” Adam says. The woman at his side parts her lips but a look from Nigel turns her explanation to a gentle shrug. With a swipe of dampened paper towel across Adam’s hip, his trousers slid low, she leans down towards him, machine in hand.

Nigel does, too, his fingers laced with Adam’s and holding tight. “Focus on your breathing, baby,” he murmurs, close to Adam’s ear. “Count your Fibonacci.”

“This isn’t the time for - fuck!”

With a blink, Nigel leans back a little to regard Adam with a grin. He’s squeezing Nigel’s hand so hard it fucking hurts, but Nigel resounds with delight to hear his little sparrow sing that particular note. The artist moves quickly, carefully, sure lines and dots between them that each pull more blood from Adam’s face, but for the ruddy glow of his cheeks.

“Why did I agree to this?” Adam mumbles, and Nigel huffs a breath against his throat, turning a nuzzle against Adam’s neck.

“If by agree, you mean sit me down for a fucking lecture about how meaningful ink against one’s skin can be, darling, then I think you agreed to it before I could even play devil’s advocate. Not that I would fucking want to, look at you.”

Adam makes another sound of pain and shifts a little. The humming stops long enough for the artist to get more ink on the needle, and by then Adam has settled again.

“You never told me what it means, darling,” Nigel says softly, distracting Adam with this, then, if he doesn’t want to use his numbers. He watches his little sparrow cast a look to the reddened sensitive skin that will chafe a little in trousers, knowing he will have to walk around without them for several days, knowing that Nigel will delight in that.

“Ursa Major,” Adam tells him, knowing that Nigel won’t know heads or tails about the constellation beyond the fact that it obviously is one. He smiles, keeping his eyes deliberately away from Nigel’s even when he squeezes his hand harder. “The Great Bear.”

Adam’s tattoo artist is discreet enough to look away, refilling her needle, as wide-eyed Nigel kisses Adam until he laughs.

**Midnighters Prompt: In Taarradhin it was mentioned that at the beginning of their relationship Nigel cheated. That night nothing felt right for Nigel. The girls leaves and Nigel goes to find Adam at 3 in the morning. A sleepy Adam opens the door and Nigel kisses him hard, still drunk and desperate to feel Adam against him.**

It’s not unusual for Nigel to come home at a ridiculous hour, but he usually has his key - fumbling and cursing quietly trying to get it to fit - but he does have one. So when the knock comes, it takes Adam a very long time to get to the door.

“Baby, please, open the door.”

Adam rubs his eyes and checks the clock in the hallway. Just after three in the morning. Almost exactly halfway through Adam’s normal and healthy sleep cycle. With a gentle groan, he starts to unlock the door.

Nigel nearly topples inward as it opens, his weight against it, and he catches himself with a few graceful steps and a hand against the door. Adam steps back with a bleary blink.

“Are you hurt?” Adam asks, as Nigel too-carefully closes the door behind him, quieter than necessary. As quiet as he thinks he should be, overcompensating for how trashed he really is. “There’s blood,” adds Adam, tapping a finger against his lips.

His back against the door, Nigel drags the back of his hand across his mouth, and regards the Soviet scarlet shade of lipstick smeared against his skin. “No, darling, not hurt.”

Adam brings a hand to rub his eyes, an almost childish turning of his fist against them before he lets his hand drop away. He looks so desperately endearing, messy hair and hooded eyes and parted soft lips that Nigel can do little more than moan softly and draw a hand through his own hair.

“I missed you.”

“It’s really early,” Adam complains, but he makes no move to have Nigel leave again. He just stifles a yawn with the back of his hand and offers a smile instead. “D’you want to come back to bed with me?”

The invitation is softly spoken, slurred sweetly from sleep. His smile is like sunset, an end to a day that’s been too goddamn long and offering instead the quiet indigo peace of night. Of sleep. Of comfort and closeness with the only one that Nigel wants to be near.

He presses his hand to Adam’s cheek and rolls his body off the door. A step brings them close enough to kiss. Another brings their bodies together and without reservation, Nigel hoists Adam from the floor by his thighs to carry him. He tilts his head to watch the angel above, who twines his legs around Nigel’s hips and settles fluttering fingers to his cheeks.

“That’s all I’ve wanted all fucking day,” Nigel murmurs, before he takes a step towards the only bed in which he wants to sleep.

**Your Nigel and Adam ficlets give me life, jfc. I come with prompt! I adore outsider fics, so I wondering if you could write someone observing Nigel and Adam and them noticing how Nigel is kind of a scary guy but he's so besotted with his boyfriend like whoa. 8D**

I try not to judge people when I see them. I’ve known enough people who looked like angels but ended up being the most gaslighting, psychopathic people in my life. I’ve known people who looked like they wouldn’t think twice about bashing in someone’s skull yet they brought kittens into work and made sure that little kids could look at their tattoos closely by kneeling down for them.

It’s all relative really, appearance hardly ever mirrors what’s on the inside.

This guy, though, I would bet went out to pick fights as often as he was blindsided by them. Rough, lean, smoking a dark cigarette with a pin-up tattoo on his neck, he looked at once like someone my mother had warned me about and someone I wanted to drag me to bed immediately.

He’d be rough. Selfish, even. Seeking out his own satisfaction with mine only an afterthought as he lit a cigarette - like he has three times already on the sidewalk steps away from the little table set out for brunch. He’d treat me like those smokes: disposable, enjoyed for his own pleasure with only ash left behind.

His chair scrapes shrill against concrete as he pulls it out, cigarette flicked smoldering to the gutter, but he doesn’t sit. Instead, he sits in the chair across from the one he’d sat in before, pulled out and left waiting. A small and nervous-looking man in a terrible grandpa sweater approaches him, and I have to wonder what kind of suicide mission he’s on.

And then they kiss. Not a little thing to the cheek like Europeans do, but on the mouth, lips parted, a flash of tongue between them. The smaller man is beautiful, to use a word not usually attributed to men. He’s got big blue-green eyes framed in long lashes, a classically striking face in a halo of brown curls.

“I warmed the seat up for you,” the tattooed man says. “Fucking metal was frigid.”

And the other just smiles, so entirely radiant that it’s genuinely breathtaking to see. And then he sits, wriggling in the seat as though to allow the warmth left for him to seep to his skin. He watches the tattooed one with wide eyes and folds his hands on the table, and after a moment he ducks his head to laugh.

“You actually wore the shirt,” he says. “The one that you said you’d never wear.”

“I never said that.”

“You did!”

“Fucking didn’t.” There is a warmth to the taller man’s voice that speaks volumes to the experience the two have shared. Time, certainly, space, definitely. And I am so damn jealous, just watching these two, so entirely unlikely and yet so entirely lovely, share space and brunch, and laugh together.

And I hate that I catch myself wondering if that man is just as deliciously brutal with his lover as I imagined he would be with me, because it means that I have to hide behind the menu so they don’t catch me staring, cheeks red as a traffic signal. Fuck, that would be embarrassing.

**Yaaaay spacedogs week!! My prompt is within the Midnighters universe: no context needed even, but Adam tying Nigel to the bed and then riding him. Nigel being maybe nervous/unsure because of restraints? But happy ending?**

There may come a day when Adam stops surprising Nigel, but after years together and rings on their fingers, it’s yet to fucking happen.

Nigel stretches, squinting, his shoulders flexing in a ripple of shadow across the contours of his muscles. His fingers curl to fists and the soft nylon creaks as he strains against them, testing. The knots are solid, intricate and strangely lovely, and the scarlet red ropes stand stark against Nigel’s skin. He ignores his stupid heart’s skittering at finding himself tied down; nothing good has ever come of it before, but then, it’s also never happened with a beautiful little bird baring himself button by button at the foot of the bed.

“Where the fuck did you learn to tie knots, darling?”

Adam just grins, delighted as he always is to show Nigel that he knows something new, or something unexpected of him.

“I read a book when I was younger,” he says. “Several. Some were about knots on boats and ships, others about artistic knotting on the body, a Japanese art called kinbaku.”

“Clever love,” Nigel purrs, and Adam slips his shirt from his shoulders and climbs into bed, straddling the older man and resting his hands on either side of his head. He bends just a little and kisses him softly, lowering his hips at the same time to rock against Nigel’s, the man already hard between his legs, spread comfortably wide. “So what will you do to me, hmm?” Nigel asks. “Trussed up as I am?”

“Ride you,” Adam tells him simply.

The quick flicker of Nigel’s nerves takes on a different tenor as Adam slicks his hand with lube and sets the bottle aside again. He curves his chest forward, reaching behind himself to stroke Nigel to shaking. Nigel growls a curse and tries to reach for him, to grasp his skinny waist and lower him down, but the ropes snap taut and hold his fists in place.

“Please,” Nigel asks, instead, when he can’t grab and move and squeeze. “Please, darling - oh, fuck,” he groans, as Adam raises up and balances, precarious, holding his position but not yet breached.

Adam just watches him, prone and beautiful, flushed from need and frustration both, and decides that it was well worth the nights of tangled dressing gown cords to learn how to tie that cuff knot. Very well worth it. He licks his lips and slowly starts to sink back, eyes closing and head tilting as he takes Nigel slowly but deliberately all the way to the base before clenching his muscles and huffing out a breath.

“This might be a long evening,” he murmurs, laughing, and sets his hands to Nigel’s chest to lever himself up again.

**I love your guys' writing, so I NEED to send in a prompt (feel free to ignore, I'm sure you guys get a ton of these!) My prompt: Nigel bottoming. This could take place in any of your verses or none of them. Just. Nigel bottoming. In whatever form that happens in. Thank you!!**

The exposure is part of the thrill, much as Nigel would like to pretend it isn’t. The sheets gather beneath Nigel’s knees as he spreads them wider, back straight, lacking the elegant curve that Adam can twist into his own. He isn’t graceful and lithe like Adam is; he’s strong, hard lines and sharp angles, scars and calloused hands. And with his arms folded beneath his cheek, Nigel tells himself he’s fucking flushed with passion or some shit, and not blushing from delighted embarrassment.

“Are you just going to fucking stare at it or are you going to do something?” He mutters, glancing to Adam behind him.

“You’re getting hard when I just stare at it,” Adam points out, amusement warming his tone. “So I could, in theory, watch you until you get harder.”

“Don’t you fucking dare.”

“What should I do instead?” Adam asks, innocent as he shuffles closer in bed and kisses against Nigel’s back, the very base of it, and nuzzles softly up his spine. “Should I tell you you can’t come until I let you? You like when I do that, and you never come, no matter how much you want to and how loudly you swear.”

“Of course I fucking don’t,” Nigel snorts, stifling the shiver that Adam teases through him into an ineloquent grunt. “Because you tell me not to.”

Adam smiles against the soft little hairs all across the small of Nigel’s back. Nigel is stronger than he is, certainly - taller, too - which makes it all the more stimulating when he so willingly does whatever Adam says. He lifts his fingers, pressing them between his lips, and then slides them against Nigel’s opening, laughing light when Nigel curses in Romanian.

“Tell me,” Nigel begs, on what little breath he can catch that isn’t shortened by the twist of a slender finger inside of him. “Tell me -”

“Don’t come,” Adam says, sliding another finger languidly against the back of Nigel’s balls as he slowly stretches him open. He can have Nigel like this for a long time, panting into the sheets or on his back or curled on his side, hard as hell, cock dark and dripping, but never coming until Adam says.

And he’ll say eventually. Just not yet.

Not yet.

**Please write me a smol thing about Nigel being a big cuddlebear and Adam being trapped under him one morning, nearly getting smished (or so he experiences it).**

Adam wakes with an oof of air when Nigel rolls onto him. It’s too early in the morning, still dark outside, and very warm. He considers his options as Nigel adjusts himself to lie more comfortably entirely atop his partner and begins to snore again. Adam wriggles and finds that suddenly laughter bubbles warm within his chest and he can’t control it or swallow it down.

He presses a hand against his lips to try and hold it in but he shakes with it anyway and when Nigel makes a low growling sound against him, Adam giggles.

“You’re heavy,” he whispers.

Nigel grunts, settling in a sprawl against his sparrow, who can hardly catch his breath beneath Nigel’s weight and his own laughter. “You’re fucking tiny,” Nigel murmurs, entirely too pleased by the veracity of his own words. “Who’s fault is that? Not fucking mine.”

“It’s - Nigel,” Adam grins, attempting to squirm free. “Genetics and - and I’m average in height and weight, Nigel, please -”

A low, content hum as Nigel’s eyes drift closed is his only answer. Adam watches the ceiling from beneath Nigel’s shoulder, peeking just out from beneath him. It feels like too many weighted blankets all at once, and in that, somewhat comforting.

“You’re terrible,” Adam mumbles, and he winds his hands around Nigel’s form to curve over his shoulders, not making an attempt to shift him, because he wouldn’t move even if Adam tried.

“You love me.”

“Does my loving you officially give you permission to squash me in the mornings?”

“Fucking hardly,” Nigel says. “Mornings, evenings, fucking middle of the fucking day if I want to. You’re mine to squish.”

Adam laughs again, shifting just enough so they are both comfortable, and turns his nose against Nigel’s cheek with a soft slow breath.

“Good,” he whispers.

**Daybreakers prompt whaaat Theres a blip in a high stakes job and Adam has a little meltdown over it. How does Nigel help?**

“I don’t know, Nigel, I don’t know!” Adam tugs his hair and regards the computer again as though it’s stung him. “I have no idea how that information was wiped. It shouldn’t have been, it was safe in my private server and -”

Adam’s fingers clench harder in his hair and he pulls it enough for some follicles to separate from the scalp.

“I already sold it,” Adam hisses. “And now I don’t have it.”

When he reaches for his hair again his fingers are caught in a big hand that folds over them, firm and gentle all at once. Nigel squeezes, seeking Adam’s other hand in turn, to stop him hurting himself without meaning to. The screen blinks bullshit at him that he doesn’t understand, and he twists his lips together in thought.

“Did someone take it?”

“That’s not how data works, Nigel, it isn’t finite - someone could copy it but they wouldn’t have to delete the source, they shouldn’t in fact, as it makes it obvious that there’s been a breach and -”

“Hush,” Nigel tells him. He bends low and turns his cheek against Adam’s hair, curls catching in his stubble, before he rests his chin atop his little prince’s head. Nigel doesn’t know a fucking thing about computers. He hardly knows how to make his stupid flashy phone pick up an incoming call. “Did you fucking - can you misplace data?”

“Yes, but, no,” Adam insists. “No, that’s an amateur mistake. I know where all my files are. I’m going to have to return the money. I’m going to have to and they’ll never work with me again, they’ll never hire me and they’ll tell others not to hire me and I’ve just spent a month unhashing for nothing, Nigel, for -”

He stops listening as Adam continues on, wrists straining where Nigel keeps them lightly held. Nigel thinks of his stupid phone. He thinks of the time he got himself locked out of it, trying to mash the screen in a drunken stupor to answer a call from Adam, and how Adam did some kind of fucking Adam-magic on it to make it work again. But his background had changed, the one he had his little prince set for him, a picture of Adam bent over his computer, sunlight behind him and gilding his hair into a glowing halo. The word comes to Nigel in an instant before he’s distracted by the squirming little thing beneath him again, and he blinks.

“Recovery,” Nigel says. “Fucking factory - whatever, you called it recovery, do you remember, darling? Going back to what it was before, a few weeks or however fucking long.”

Adam makes a sound of disbelief and displeasure and then stops moving entirely, frozen and fixed on the screen that flickers before him. He can feel Nigel’s breathing against his hair, can feel the warmth of it, the familiarity and reassurance. Turning his wrists to free them, Adam squirms around in his chair and kneels on it, grasping Nigel’s face in both hands and kissing him deeply.

“Genius,” he breathes. “Fucking genius, Nigel.” And with a grin, he turns back to his computer.

**what do you think of nigel who's been in the closet his whole life and adam who was raised to be totally comfortable with being gay?**

“What are you doing?”

Adam blinks, once, and reaches again. “Holding your hand.”

A quick glance to the street surrounding confirms that the few people close enough to have seen either didn’t, or don’t care, but Nigel stuffs his hands into his jacket pockets anyway. Leaves hiss crisp across the concrete as they walk, a quick jaunt to the grocery for more soda and to fill their lungs with fresh air - well, Adam does, anyway, as Nigel fishes out his pack of cigarettes to place one between his lips.

“Why?” Nigel asks, keeping his hands occupied, even as Adam walks closer at his side. Too close, suspiciously close. Nigel’s knuckles ache as if in anticipation for someone saying something, anything, a breath of a slur that will end in blood on the sidewalk.

“Because I love you and I want to hold your hand,” Adam tells him, brows furrowing slightly, wondering why this is such a difficult thing to process and understand. They have been together long enough, they touch just fine at home - too much, sometimes, when Adam is trying to work and Nigel insists on nuzzling him to distraction. “You hold my hand at home.”

“At home no one can see,” Nigel points out, and Adam stops, then, in the middle of the sidewalk, and tilts his head to watch his partner.

“Are you embarrassed by me?” He asks.

“Embarrassed?” Nigel sputters, plucking his cigarette free. “Fucking - what? Of course not.”

“I need you to explain,” Adam says. “I don’t understand why it’s okay to do it at home but not in public, unless you don’t want other people to see.”

Nigel’s lips curl and he squints quick down the street, jaw working before he speaks in a low voice, quiet enough to not be overheard. “I’m not embarrassed by you, darling. I fucking love you, you know that. But it’s - it looks fucking queer, and there are idiots who don’t like that. Idiots who will run their fucking mouths and catch a fucking beating for it.”

“Do you care?” Adam asks him, stepping closer again, just watching Nigel as he nervously puffs at his cigarette and directs the smoke above their heads. “We’ll never see them again, and we never have to talk to them again. Does it matter if they look and if they say something?”

He doesn’t let Nigel answer before stepping closer and kissing his cheek, just a gentle thing, chaste, before stepping back to look at him, fond.

“If someone says anything, I will say something back. And you know when I start talking it takes a lot for me to stop. They’ll go away on their own, no beatings necessary.” With a warm look, Adam takes a step forward again, and holds out his hand for Nigel to take.

Nigel makes a small, low sound of distress. This sort of thing just isn’t fucking done where he’s from - it’s an open season invitation to get harassed and beaten. He can take a fucking punch, but it’s Adam he worries about more. Their reputations. Rumors.

But rumors of fucking what, exactly? That Nigel and Adam live together - that they fuck like teenagers and cuddle on the couch? All of that’s fucking true, and more, and none of it has made Nigel any less capable of making someone choke on their own teeth if necessary. He ashes his cigarette and parts his lips with his tongue, before taking Adam’s hand with his free one.

He’d much rather make Adam happy than those who couldn’t fucking matter less.

**Spacedogs week! *-* May I ask for Adam huddling for warmth while watching stars with Nigel? Please, please, please, I need this! <3**

Adam’s breath steams in front of him and he shuffles on his bottom to sit closer to Nigel, on the porch of the little house they’ve rented. The other is smoking, but contrary to his usual loud demeanor, he is watching the stars in silence, calm, relaxed, and apparently entirely unaffected by the cold that slips right through to Adam’s bones.

Adam sets his chin against Nigel’s shoulder and that seems to break the older man from his trance. With a smile, he holds his cigarette away and nuzzles against Adam with a hum.

“If you’d told me a year ago that I’d enjoy coming here every fucking winter to watch the fucking stars I would’ve laughed you out the door.”

“But you like it?” Adam whispers, eyes narrowing in delight.

“It’s nice to not hear cars fucking constantly. It’s nice to not smell fucking garbage everywhere,” Nigel says, considering. “It’s nice to be out of the fucking city.”

“And?”

“And it’s nice to be here with you,” Nigel grins, sliding a heavy arm onto Adam’s skinny shoulders to tug him close. He nuzzles against his temple, up into his hairline, breathing in the rosy-blue heat of Adam so close against him, the color of the sun setting across water. “You know you don’t need to fish for fucking compliments, right? You’re fucking spoiled.”

Adam squirms more, pressing up against Nigel’s warmth and letting his eyes close. He knows. He knows that Nigel loves him and that he doesn’t have to fish for compliments and that Nigel won’t ever lie to him. He knows it’s nice to get out of the city and he’s happy that he has managed to wheedle Nigel into enjoying this with him.

Adam takes a deep breath of cool clean air and lets it out.

“Okay,” he says. “Hold me, please.”

“Shouldn’t have to ask for that either,” Nigel murmurs, chastising himself inwardly for not having snared Adam as soon as he was near enough. His arm slips to Adam’s waist, his other hand to a bony hip, and splaying his legs comfortably, Nigel drags Adam into his lap and surrounds him in a snug embrace. Adam’s smile widens, his attention turned from the stars to Nigel as he presses his cold nose against Nigel’s neck.

He could go in and get a blanket, make cocoa for him, bring out an extra jacket - one of Nigel’s big ugly ones - to wrap Adam in. He should, the night-time chill setting in swiftly. But it’s hard to convince himself to be anywhere else but here, where he can keep Adam warm himself, instead.

**Space Dogs week prompt: Nigel returns home to home unexpectedly with little to no explanation to Adam and then he returns a few months later to find Adam....? (fill in the blank. Love your work by the way! )**

“Darling.” Nigel sets his duffel to the floor and takes quiet steps towards the kitchen. He hears nothing to suggest that Adam is home or awake - and it is an ungodly fucking hour - even though the lights are on. “Baby, are you home?”

“Here.” The voice comes from the bedroom, and sounds a little muffled, and because Nigel is Nigel and because long flights make him antsy and because he hasn’t got enough blood in his caffeine system he assumes the worst. Bound and gagged and robbed, hurt and abused, held hostage for some stupid shit thing Nigel’s done -

Quick feet carry him to the bedroom, hand already reaching back for his gun, but he finds Adam sitting cross-legged on the bed, a soft rag held between his teeth as he assembles a -

“Adam, is that a fucking gun?”

Adam looks up, bright-eyed and delighted, and drops the cloth when he parts his lips to speak. “It’s two guns,” he says, turning the one he had been working on and reaching behind himself for another. “They match.”

Nigel huffs a laugh, dizzy enough with relief that he slumps a shoulder against the doorframe. For a moment more, he just watches Adam in his flannel pajamas, dark blue spotted with little white stars. His hair sticks up all over, his cheeks are flushed bright with excitement. He’s beautiful, he’s fucking beautiful and Nigel’s whole chest hurts with how much he loves him.

Finally he comes closer, sitting carefully on the edge of the bed when Adam wriggles aside to make room for him. “May I?” He asks, reaching for one of the revolvers only when Adam nods. They’re heavy, big guns for a big caliber, shiny and chrome and embellished with flowery flourishes carved into the ivory grips. Real fucking ivory, too. Nigel resists the urge to ask how much they fucking cost, but instead regards Adam with an arched brow. Adam doesn’t respond, so Nigel puts his question into words for him instead.

“For you?”

“For us,” Adam smiles, seeking across Nigel’s features and easing only when Nigel grins wide. “The ivory is from the same piece. This way we have something connecting us, something physical, when we’re apart.”

Nigel just stares, watches as Adam assembles the other gun fully and holds that one out too. One is embellished with darker detailing, almost black, ebony, he would wager. The one he holds now is mostly white, pale and beautiful. He knows which one is for him. Nigel leans over and kisses Adam on the forehead, then on the cheek.

“They’re perfect, baby,” he whispers, and he knows Adam is smiling without even having to look at him. “You’re perfect.”

**Spacedogs currently gives me life. I'm a sucker for angst, and now all I can think about is imagining how Adam would react if Nigel seriously messed up (either due to booze or drugs) and cheated on him. It would be interesting to read how they cope with the situation. I've never read any fic exploring this... I'm not sure my heart could handle it but it's something that I'd be very interested in reading ^**

To both of their surprise, Adam’s response is utter silence. He doesn’t slam the door, he doesn’t tell Nigel to leave, he doesn’t panic or scream or sob. He just stares, a little to the left of Nigel’s shoulder and back into the middle distance.

Then he steps away and leaves the door open for Nigel to do whatever he wants, and goes into the living room.

Nigel finds him curled up on the couch, feet tucked beneath a cushion, arms folded gently in front of him as Adam holds a book but doesn’t open it. He doesn’t look up when Nigel comes nearer, he doesn’t respond to Nigel saying his name. But he does tense up significantly when Nigel reaches out to touch him.

Firm fingers work slowly into taut muscle, one hand, and then the other. Nigel’s knees sink into the carpet as he lowers himself beside the arm of the couch where Adam rests. He resists the urge to nuzzle, to let Adam’s hair curl soft against his cheek when he breathes warmth against them. Adam smells sweet and clean, shampoo without scent. Nigel knows because he buys it for him.

Or he did, anyway.

Even stupid shampoo seems uncertain now.

“She didn’t mean anything to me, darli- Adam,” Nigel murmurs. It doesn’t feel like his name to call him, now, as if everything were fine. As if he hadn’t fucked up so monumentally. With so much blow caking his nose, he wouldn’t have thought he could get hard at all, let alone -

“Please say something,” asks Nigel. “Fucking anything, Adam, please. I fucked up, I know I did, it didn’t mean anything -”

Adam blinks, a slow and deliberate thing, and then doesn’t move again. What can he say? What should he say? What can he say?

“I don’t understand how people work, that’s not what I’m good at,” Adam murmurs, shifting a little on the couch and flexing his fingers against his arms. “That’s what you’re good at.” He doesn’t want to look at Nigel, he doesn't particularly want him to be close, but Adam is too tired to ask him to move. It’s rare that he gets emotionally tired. Nigel never drains him.

Drained.

He did today.

“Why don’t you tell me what to say?”

It is Nigel who makes a little sound this time. It is Nigel who sounds weak. Who was weak, given over to idiot animal impulse and a pair of fake tits, to drugs and loud music, to a stiff dick that he was too impatient to resolve at home or alone, as he should have.

“Do you want me to go?”

“I don’t know,” Adam answers.

“Do you want me to stop touching you?”

“I don’t know.”

Nigel stops anyway, smoothing Adam’s sweater flat and pushing himself to stand again. “Tell me at least you know that I’m sorry,” Nigel says.

Adam doesn’t move, doesn’t look up, doesn't even seem to breathe for a moment, and Nigel resigns himself with that as his answer. It would be fair fucking enough if it was. He doesn’t say anything else. He turns to quietly make his way to the spare room and the shower in that ensuite, and he has to refrain from making a sound when he hears Adam behind him. Just quietly. Just above a whisper.

“I know.” 

**Midnighters verse: Adam sends Nigel some dirty texts and pictures while Nigel is away**

The first time Nigel’s phone buzzes - not the burner he picked up in the Budapest airport, but his own - it’s with a text.

_I miss you._

Nigel drops his bag to the ground to reply with a series of hearts and kissing-faces, enough that he feels he’s expressed himself and his homesickness sufficiently. He waits for a response, but quickly shifting numbers up and down, realizes the hour in New York and that Adam must have sent the text while he was on his flight. At least he’ll wake up to something nice.

The second time Nigel’s phone buzzes, he’s regarded with an arch brow by the hard-ass across the dinner table from him. Nigel asks for just a fucking second, and unlocks his phone, keeping his hands above the table. In the picture received, Adam holds the phone out in front of him, cheek against his pillow and hair messy in his eyes. His other hand is curled against his mouth, expression sleepy but with a particular cotton-candy blush beneath his eyes. His shoulders are bare, and Nigel knows the rest of him is as well.

_I really miss you._

Nigel blinks, considers sending a response and realizes he has none. Were he alone, in the hotel room or even in a fucking cab he would call Adam, talk to him, just breathe down the fucking line while Adam breathed back. Instead he sets the screen to lock and puts the phone in his pocket, eyes up to the man in front of him again. They dine and they discuss, and throughout, Nigel can feel his phone vibrate once, twice, thrice....

He excuses himself to go to the bathroom, shutting the stall and pressing his back against it, fumbling with his phone to unlock it. He forces himself to look at the messages sent in order, not just gorge himself on the beauty he knows is coming. The first is another photo, lower, now, showing Adam’s pale chest. His hand rests against it, a nipple hard between the small webs of his fingers.

_Really, really miss you._

Nigel curses and opens the next.

It’s dark, and he can barely make it out. Almost abstract, had Nigel not spent months and months and years studying that part of Adam’s body until he knew it by heart. Adam’s knee holds up the blanket, obscuring most of the light that falls in a sharp line over his belly and just catches the warm curls of hair at his groin. In the shadow of the blanket, his cock curves erect, out of the light but clear as fucking day to Nigel. Adam’s other leg is curled, spreading him. There is no caption.

Nigel squeezes between his own legs in pleasure and warning both. He can only imagine how this deal would go if he came back to the table limping, cock stretching out his trousers. It would certainly end not with Adam’s soft, taut shaft within his mouth, but the barrel end of a fucking gun instead. He releases himself with a grunt, and types back quickly.

_I can see that darling. Touch yourself and say my name._

He pauses in thought, then grins, and adds:

_Send more pics when done. I want to see you messy._

**Adam tries to grow a beard to look more grown up. But when he decides he hates it, Nigel tries to convince him otherwise. When it doesn't work, he helps Adam shave.**

“It really didn’t,” Nigel insists again, rinsing the razor in the warm water plugged up in the sink. “It really didn’t look bad, darling.”

“It felt strange,” Adam mumbles, then obediently closes his mouth and sits still as Nigel runs the flat of the blade delicately and precisely over his cheek. “Almost heavy. And it was itchy.”

“It gets like that as it grows,” Nigel laughs, watching his little sparrow slowly emerge from beneath the fuzz he had tried to grow over his cheeks and chin and on his upper lip. It had been a surprise when Adam had stopped shaving, just to see, but Nigel had found that despite initial misgivings, the light shadow against his angel’s face was rather fetching.

Who would have fucking thought?

Nigel’s not turned on by men. Not really, though sometimes he’s accidentally blown his load at the wrong moment watching porn, when it’s focused on some idiot’s spotty ass clenching rather than the girl beneath. It doesn’t matter at this point, though. Nigel’s come to terms with the fact that not even porn - not even the really filthy shit - gets him off anymore, hardly even stiff compared to even the thought of Adam. So the beard had been a change, startling certainly, but Adam looked no less gorgeous for it.

Maybe even a little more.

Nigel hums a warning to his own cock and wipes the blade clean on the little towel beside the sink, before tilting his head to swipe another swath of hair clean. Inch by inch, his angel emerges, pale-pink skin unfathomably soft. With a smile, he leans low and kisses Adam’s cheek, hairless and delicate. Again, as he carefully shaves another stipe clean. Every whisk of his razor is cleaned against the water and towel in turn, and chased by a kiss, until finally Adam squirms, nose wrinkling.

“Sit still darling,” Nigel murmurs, lips against his cheek. “You wouldn’t want me to slip, would you?”

**Nigel gets a new hobby taking pictures of airport carpets.**

It started with one, and it started because Nigel dropped his fucking phone when he set the timer on the camera and let it go. The photo is almost artistic, mid-fall towards the carpet that thankfully didn’t crack the screen or dent the phone, and so Nigel keeps it. A reminder, he tells himself, to not be such a dumbass next time and swallow his pride and ask someone to take a photo of him with a sign or a landmark.

The next one happens because Nigel pushes too many buttons too quickly, and instead of leaving his gallery he enters the camera and takes a photo. This one isn’t quite as artistic as the first mishap, but he keeps it anyway, because the two of them are so fucking different. One with bright neon flecks on a grey background, the other wildly orange with swirls of blue. They are both gaudy and terrible. Nigel loves them.

After that it becomes habit, he takes photos of whatever he’s standing on when he’s waiting to clear security, the carpets in the VIP lounges versus those in the main reception area, he takes photos of worn parts and new parts, and adds them to a folder on his phone that grows and grows with every trip he takes overseas.

He realizes he starts to ask Adam to plan his trips to fly through airports he hasn’t photographed before.

It’s silly, trite even - of all the fucking things in the world to take pictures of, Nigel takes pictures of carpets. He hoards them, really, as dearly as he hoards all the filthy fucking photos that his little sparrow sends him when he’s away. They’re the only two folders he’s taken time to figure out how to name - “angel” for his darling, and “rugs” for his carpets.

He quickly thumbs the application closed when Adam says, “You’re going through Portland this time. Is that okay?”

“Yeah,” Nigel says, resisting the urge to double-check that he’s not already got that one in his collection. “Can I -”

“Your layover is longer there by two hours than it would be in San Francisco.”

“That’s fine.”

“That means you won’t get into -”

“Fucking goddamn miserable fucking Russia, I know.”

“Not until nearly three in the morning. Nigel -”

“Baby.”

“Why? I know that you dislike flying in so late, you’ve said it upsets your sleep schedule more.”

Nigel scowls, brow deeply lined and lips downturned as he seeks for a cigarette in his shirt pocket. “Because I haven’t been through Portland before.”

“Because it’s a very awkward way to go, if you’re heading to Russia,” Adam points out, swinging back and forth on his chair in slow deliberate turns. “It takes longer and you have more layovers and you take more planes. But you insist.”

The question remains unspoken only because Adam is unsure how to ask it. He hardly worries that Nigel is being unfaithful, and he knows for a fact that he isn’t currently pursued by any corporations or private security companies. It makes no sense why he would want to jump airports as he does.

“What do you do there?” Adam asks then, the best he can come up with. “At the airports. What do you do?”

Nigel regards Adam for a long time, misgivings building with every beat that passes. But as with all things Adam, Nigel can’t resist, and with a grunted curse, opens his little carpet folder again. Wild patterns and soulful colors, each one with a particular vibration and taste to them as Nigel takes them in, litter the screen in tiny frames. Each one has an airport abbreviation and a date on it. Each one is in order. And with a frown, he thrusts the phone towards Adam.

“It’s stupid,” he declares.

Adam sits forward and takes the phone, letting his thumb just skim the screen as he scrolls through the dozens and dozens of photos Nigel has saved there.

“Are these -”

“Shut up.”

“That’s JFK.”

Nigel leans over to look, humming. He answers before he can stop himself. “Newark.”

Adam just looks at him, amused and delighted, and passes the phone back before turning to his computer and typing something up. He shifts around, adjusting something before he sits back. 

“I can bounce you through four airports in Russia before you disembark in Siberia. Three of them you haven’t been to yet.” He grins, watching Nigel set the cigarette between his lips and narrow his eyes at his partner. “And,” Adam adds, “it means you’ll get there at 9 AM, and save your sleep.”

Nigel’s heart doesn’t settle with the acceptance; it beats fast for it. He clicks his phone off and slips it into his shirt pocket, cigarette drawn from his lips with a trail of smoke pluming thick on his exhale.

“Goddammit, Adam,” he mutters, before grasping the kid by the back of his neck to tug him close, a kiss pushed hard against his temple. “Book it, beautiful.”

**How about a fic where Adam has to look after an ill Nigel?**

**Spacedogs prompt! How about Adam needing to calm Nigel for once?**

**Midnighters prompt: Nigel comes home after a hard day of work and beating up people. At first, he's all bitchy when Adam asks him about all the blood on his clothes but then he starts to cry cause he's feeling so terrible about having done so much evil in his life and Adam comforts him and tries to explain to him how he's still a good person and that he needs him. No pressure though, Spacedogs week's got me happy enough already!**

**Hello, I have a Midnighters prompt. Nigel goes away for the night on business and seals whatever deal he wanted to make. It's good news and Adam is looking forward to Nigel's return. When he does get back to the flat, he's suffering the most uncomfortable coke comedown of his life. He doesn't know what to do. The business men had some VERY good merchandise and of course it would have been rude to decline. I'd like to see how Adam deals with a miserable, sickly, crying Nigel. <3 <3 <3 x**

The dark smear on the back of his hand looks like oil in the low hallway light. Burning saffron yellow, it seems to fade and flicker as he blinks, fingers splaying slowly. Old blood, someone else’s, from a busted nose or shattered mouth. Old blood, his own, from split knuckles cut against white bone.

Fresh blood, just as dark, dripping from his nose against his skin and running sideways like hard rain across the hairs on the back of his hand.

“Adam,” Nigel whispers, his vision snapping into place an instant after he raises his head. He blinks and as he steps closer the door flickers like film in the busted old Romanian cinema where he got his first blowjob. The sound of his fist against the door burns like stomach acid on the back of his tongue, and he swallows down a powder-thick dollop of blood. “Adam, sweetheart, please -”

It isn’t late, is it? Not too late. He didn’t leave the house later than five, and he wasn’t out long. Not that he can remember. Another knock and he can hear the shuffling on the other side of the door, and Nigel steps back as the door swings open. Adam looks at him with wide eyes and furrowed brows, lips parted before he closes them and breathes out long through his nose.

“What happened?” He asks softly, ushering Nigel into the house and locking the door behind. He sets his hands to Nigel’s cheeks and holds him still, or tries, anyway. He can feel the way the larger man shivers and trembles in incremental shifts beneath him. “Nigel, what did you take?”

A thick snort, wet, is answer enough, but Nigel punctuates the point by dragging his hand across his nose again and rubbing despite the steadily streaking scarlet across his skin. He looks past Adam, around him, anywhere but the angel who stills Nigel’s hand against his nose and removes it gently. Nigel sighs hard, his breath curdled with smoke and liquor and blackening blood.

“I fucking -”

“You’ve had too much cocaine.”

“I fucking killed him,” Nigel seethes, through gritted teeth. He twists free of Adam’s grasp, swatting his hand aside. He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be here period, let alone worrying Adam, his Adam, his angel, his - “Baby. I’m sorry.”

Adam returns his hands to Nigel’s face and holds him a little harder, so it’s not as easy to dislodge him this time. He watches Nigel carefully, sees the way his eyes can’t focus, pupils blown wide and black, the way his body trembles, he can feel that he will get feverish soon. He must have one hell of a headache.

“We’re going to clean you up,” Adam tells him, stroking a thumb through the blood just to smear it from Nigel’s lip so he doesn’t swallow more - he’ll be sick as it is. “You need water and a dark room and to sleep, Nigel, you will feel terrible if you don’t.”

“I feel fucking terrible now.”

“Worse,” Adam tells him, and smiles, tries to, because he knows that that is what you should do when someone is upset, and Nigel is so rarely upset that he has yet to incorporate that particular response into his directory. “But I’ll make you feel better.”

“Why?” Nigel asks, clasping Adam’s slender little hand in his own, until he sees the blood of so many smeared clotting against his knuckles and drops his hand again. Adam steps closer, keeps his palm right where it is against Nigel’s cheek as he asks again, “Why, Adam? I’m fucking shit. I’m scum. I fucking hurt people, it’s all I’m fucking good for. I’m -”

“The man that I love,” Adam answers. The truth of his words - Adam would give him nothing less - is enough that Nigel feels his body weaken beneath the weight of crashing adrenaline and days of burning out on cocaine. He slips shaking arms around Adam’s waist and buries his face against his neck, shuddering a silent sob when Adam embraces him with skinny arms and holds him tight.

“You’re the one who takes care of me,” Adam reminds him. “Not just around the house, but when I get upset. When I get scared. When I have a meltdown, like you’re having now, you hold me just like this. It’s equilibrium,” he says, tugging Nigel towards the bathroom with careful steps, “that I can hold you, too.”

 

**spacedogs prompt: beth sees adam and nigel out in public somewhere. even though she has no idea who nigel is, she's surprised to see how much he dotes on adam, and that they're clearly romantically involved with one another.**

“Adam?”

A hand against his shoulder startles him more than the sound of her voice. It’s been a very long time, years and years, and for a moment Adam can only stare at the pretty girl he once knew so well. Or at least, he thought that he did, much as Adam feels like he ever understands anyone.

“Beth,” Adam says, a smile darting wide and then settling again. “I thought you -”

“Moved, yeah,” she grins, shaking her head with a spill of dark curls across her shoulder, dressed in a festive red sweater that hugs sleek enough to her frame that Adam notices. It’s natural to notice. “I’m home for a little bit though,” she says. “Holidays and everything. Thought I’d do some last minute shopping in the city which - you know, it’s a mess,” she adds, with a little laugh. “How are you?”

Adam just blinks at her a moment, caught entirely off guard in waiting outside a corner store, of all places. He shakes his head, then he nods, and with a little laugh he shrugs and brings a hand up to scratch the back of his neck.

“I’ve been busy,” he admits. “I like work and I don’t have to deal with people asking me stupid questions and for clarification. I work from home now. Do you still write?”

Beth smiles wider, pushing her hands into her pockets and rocking forward onto her toes before settling back again. She is movement and wonder, Adam knows, and she still is, even when he isn’t in love with her.

“I have four books now,” she says, and the pride is evident. “All for kids, and they’re going very well. The favourite is still my first, though.” Her blush is lovely. “Do you still -”

“Fuck, it’s fucking cold.” Nigel lights up before he even leaves the bodega, and he moves to stand beside Adam, shoulder to shoulder, leaning his weight against his little sparrow enough that Adam sets his foot wider to accommodate, smiling.

Beth blinks, as surprised as Adam had been moments before. “Hello,” she says, watching as they lean together, and then taking in the older man, greying hair and a tattoo on his neck, cigarette flaring between his lips.

“Evening,” Nigel says, raising a brow. He makes no small show of taking the girl in from head to toe and back again, and with an approving grunt, he turns his attention once more to Adam. “Bought them out of fucking soda for you, darling. If there’s a fucking blizzard you’ll be set ‘til spring. The bag’s fucking heavy,” he mutters, shifting its weight against his arm. “Did you need anything else?”

Adam shakes his head and smiles, tilting away from Nigel’s nuzzle and blushing when Nigel pursues him even still. “I’m fine.”

“Friend of yours?” Beth asks, laughing a little, almost nervous.

“Nigel, Beth and I used to live in the same building before she moved away. She writes books for children, she’s very good,” Adam says, happy to have his attention directed elsewhere, someplace that isn’t the warm nuzzling breaths of Nigel against him. “Beth, this is Nigel, we live together now.” 

Her brows raise in tandem, high, and her smile wavers before it widens. “Oh,” she says, accepting Nigel’s hand as he thrusts it out. “Well, that’s lovely.”

“Pleasure,” Nigel says. His eyes narrow in a particular delight, the awkwardness immediately transparent to him. He knows all too well what it’s like to run into an ex. He’s less familiar with what it’s like to run into one when you’re moved on to the next, having had devotion to particularly few besides Adam. “Going to come around and visit the old place, then?” Nigel asks, grin spreading as the other two share a look.

“It would be nice to find out what you’re writing now,” Adam says, as Beth retracts her hand and pockets it, looking between them both.

“Maybe,” she says, offering an easy shrug and a smile. “Maybe we can. Wouldn’t be the biggest surprise at this point, I suppose.”

Nigel huffs a laugh. The plans are loosely made, with Nigel’s arm heavy over Adam’s shoulders as he taps in Beth’s new number and sends a text for her to have his. They all agree that it was nice to see the others - or meet them - again, before snow starts to sparkle down among the dismal gold streetlights and they part. Nigel keeps his arm around Adam’s shoulder, his other weighed heavy by the bag that reads thank you for shopping over and over again in red print against white plastic.

“Did you fuck her?” Nigel asks, delighted, once they’re safely down the block.

Adam hums a note of displeasure at the choice of word and tilts his head towards Nigel. “I told you I’ve had sex before,” he reminds him primly, and with a pleased smile, Adam continues on towards home, grinning when he hears Nigel curse and laugh before catching up.

**Hey, sorry if you've already gotten this before, but could you write Adam talking (very enthusiastically) about water on Mars to Nigel?**

At ten in the morning, Nigel made breakfast. There wasn't enough coffee in him to track all of Adam's predictions for what the press conference might be, and he quieted him only to remind him to eat before his toast got cold. Adam spoke around a mouthful of it instead.

At eleven, Nigel turned on the TV as Adam checked where the conference would be broadcast. Briefly distracted by a gameshow of guessing prices, Nigel clicked to a news station only when Adam's insistence became dire. He never did get to see the idiot who bid a dollar lose.

At eleven twenty-five, Nigel settled into the couch beside Adam, staring wide-eyed and unblinking in anticipation. He told Nigel that it's very unusual for NASA to hold press conferences and that it must be something very exciting, to many people, for them to do so. As he expressed concern for the rovers hard at work so far away, Nigel grasped him by the waist to drag him nearer, nearer, inches and inches until he pulls Adam into his lap and nuzzles his the soft tan shoulder of his sweater.

"My little astronaut," Nigel grins.

"I'm not, Nigel, I'm an engineer."

"Little spaceman."

"Nigel."

"Cosmonaut."

"Nigel!"

He hears only distantly, beyond Adam's gasp, that they've found traces of water on Mars. Maybe it's exciting, but not as much as prying Adam's button-down loose from his pants so that Nigel can touch his tummy instead. Nothing's more exciting than that.

“Do you understand what this means?” Adam asks, voice hushed appropriately to convey his awe. He seems to not care at all that Nigel is walking tickling fingers up over his belly and to his chest. He squirms happily in Nigel’s lap. “There is a possibility of a past atmosphere, of a chance at life on a planet we thought was barren - Nigel -”

“Yes, darling?”

“You’re not listening to a word I’m saying are you?”

Nigel nuzzles against Adam’s neck and holds him close, as on the television more graphics are shown, photographs, interviews with important people in the scientific community.

“All I know,” Nigel tells him, “is that should there suddenly be a surge to go to fucking Mars, and all the fucking engineers get flown over, I’ll follow you. Ends of the earth and beyond it.”

Adam just grins, warm and delighted, and leans back to press a kiss against Nigel’s cheek.

“I don’t think there will be a mass pilgrimage to Mars any time in our lifetime, but the idea that -”

Nigel lets him talk, he likes it, the way Adam’s words warm his skin, the way he wriggles in delight and presses closer, the way that he holds to Nigel and touches him, content to know that without even asking, Nigel would go with him wherever the wind took them both.

Or a rocket.

Whatever.

**Spacedogs Prompt: Nigel has cataplexy and the first time he feels genuine love/happiness with Adam... he collapses. :3**

_Extreme emotion_ , he was told, when he finally managed to find a doctor he could trust enough to ask. _Related to narcolepsy_. Nigel hadn't argued the point - he really hadn't said anything beyond asking how much the fucking tab would be just to be told that what was happening to him wasn't treatable.

It's rare enough that a collapse occurs, and never without enough moments' notice to catch himself and settle. It never happens when he's angry, thank fuck, because he couldn't effectively continue smashing someone's face in if he were going limp every time he tried. It never happens when he's fucking, and thank fuck for that too, because the last thing he'd have needed is to blink out buried balls deep. And knowing the kinds of girls he used to pull, they'd probably just have emptied his wallet and left before he could move again.

It's always laughter, which explains why it happens so fucking rarely - it's the kind of ridiculous joy that leaves one breathless, gasping before another peal of laughter splits loose. Or, in Nigel's case, it leaves him curled unresponsive but conscious. That kind of noise was dissuaded where he grew up, like most shows of emotion. It's no fucking wonder it hardly happened growing up.

But with Adam? It's fucking unavoidable.

“Do not,” Nigel growls, watching Adam’s eyes narrow and his smile widen. “Fucking don’t, Adam, I mean it.” He can feel the curl of his lips already despite trying his hardest to keep himself stoic. If only it was as simple, though, as keeping his fucking smile off his face. It’s in the heart racing and the quick breathing and the genuine delight at being so close to another human being.

Shit.

Nigel takes a breath and in that moment, Adam pounces on him, all limbs curling around the older man to bring him to the bed as though he were a gazelle, today, and Adam a lion. With a playful growl, Adam sets his teeth to Nigel’s neck, to his hammering pulse, down to his collarbone before he nuzzles the warm patch of hair at the open collar of his shirt. Nigel doesn’t move, just lets Adam have his fun, watching him and hoping to hell he can move before Adam asks why he cannot.

“I caught you,” Adam whispers to him, nuzzling. “I caught you which means you’re mine today. And I can do with you anything I want.”

Shit shit shit.

His hands slip from Adam’s back, his body lax. He manages a hum just as his eyes close and that watery weightlessness overcomes him. Conscious, still, not like when he blacks out drunk, and aware of the slender fingers that open his shirt - the warm mouth that sinks against his stubbled cheek.

“I am not going to stop,” Adam threatens, smiling, “just because you’re playing dead. So you might as well keep it up.”

That, at least, Nigel can manage.

**Just a little request for Spacedogs week: Could you maybe please write something where Adam is trying to be quiet for some reason (maybe noise complaints from neighbours - I adored your earlier prompt-, maybe they're in a semipublic place, etc), but he just can't thanks to Nigel's efforts. Maybe it ends up with Adam being gagged, maybe it doesn't. It's up to you :D**

Adam squirms, a deliberate and pleasant thing, and tilts his head to see past the rows and rows of books that hide them. He makes a sound - a little one, breathy - and shakes his head.

“Nigel, don’t.”

“Why not, darling?”

“We’re in the library.”

“I know.” Nigel presses a hot kiss against the back of Adam’s neck and lets it linger as he draws his hand further between Adam’s legs. “It’s fucking naughty, isn’t it? I love it.”

“This isn’t what libraries are for,” Adam whispers and then bites his lip as Nigel’s fingers snake beneath the waistband of his pants. They are in the back of the archive section, rarely accessed and very quiet. Adam knows there are others here, sitting at the little allocated desks or walking the rows to find the books they need that they can only read here.

Someone will see. Someone will see very soon if they’re not careful.

“You’ll have to stay quiet,” Nigel tells him, thumbing across Adam’s parted lips as his other hand pushes down into his trousers. Thick curly hair and velvet-soft shaft beneath his fingers, Nigel curls them in a loop around Adam’s cock and tugs once. Twice.

“Nigel,” whimpers Adam, his knees nearly buckling. Quick hands catch against Nigel's hips, pressing close enough that he can feel Nigel’s arousal already obscenely stiff, twitching in response to the friction of Adam’s ass. “We’re going to get -”

“Off? Here? Darling, listen to you,” Nigel breathes, feigning shock. “Wanton. And getting hard, too,” he notes, tugging Adam’s reluctant erection stiffer with every stroke. Slowly, Nigel slips his palm across Adam’s mouth, careful to let him have room to breathe, but to muffle the inevitable rising whine of his little angel.

“No.” The muffled reply sounds almost petulant, but it’s not a request to stop. Adam shifts into Nigel’s eager stroking with relish and delight, squirming against him, arching his hips forward, darting his eyes to the end of the long corridor in panic that someone will see, someone will inevitably see. “Nigel.” So gagged, the name sounds like a pleading little whine, and Nigel is okay with that. He kisses against Adam’s temples and down to his ear, tracing the rim with the tip of his tongue.

“You wanna spread wider for me, baby?” Nigel asks. Adam trembles, shakes his head, but shifts his feet apart anyway. “God, look at you.” A whimper, loud and barely caught behind Nigel’s hand, as Adam’s cheeks burn with how hot this is, how wrong, and naughty, and entirely not what Adam would ever consider doing. “Better stay quiet, darling,” Nigel tells him. “I’m not sure what I’ll do if someone sees you like this who isn’t me. Might find myself getting real fucking possessive and taking you right here.”

Adam just goes lax, hard and flushed and aroused beyond words. He presses a hot kiss to Nigel’s hand and brings his own down to work the button and zipper open so Nigel can stroke him better.

**Daybreakers prompt: Nigel finds Adam 'violently' upset when he comes in one night and helps him calm down. (Also love Daybreakers btw when do you guys think you'll have a new chapter?)**

**Thanks for this awesome week~ I love your ficlets ♥ May I suggest one prompt? Adam having an anxiety attack and Nigel being there to calm him? I just want fluff /u\\. Thank you so much <3**

The scent of coffee fills the air as the jar of instant cracks against the ground. Nigel leaves his bag of bodega-goods behind, fingers flitting swiftly for his gun. There’s a mirror, broken, blood in motionless trails from the point of impact. The ceiling reflects in fragments from the floor and Nigel calls out, “I’m going to blow your fucking brains against the wall if you don’t show yourself.”

Nothing.

Silence.

No - not silence.

Breath whispers like a river sweeping against shoreline, but too fast to be soothing. It sounds like pain, like fear, it spills uneasy green like old copper pennies across Nigel’s tongue and with a click of the hammer, he seeks out the source. Sighting down the barrel as he turns into Adam’s room, he stops. He blinks. And he brings the gun down to his side as he approaches the little lump on the floor beside the bed, a tuft of hair visible within the tunnel of a weighted blanket.

“Adam,” Nigel whispers, crouching, eyes still sharp as he runs a hand through Adam’s hair and holds firm. “Baby, what happened?”

“Stupid, I was stupid, I was _stupid stupid stupid_ -”

Nigel grasps Adam’s hair tighter before he strokes it from his forehead. He tries to see his little prince’s face but Adam turns away, further into the softness of the blanket, smearing maroon blood across the fabric.

“I had to make noise go away, it was so loud,” Adam mumbles. “So loud. Too loud. So I made a sound that would be louder, again and again but I broke something, made a mess, and there’s blood and it tastes like copper, and it’s messy and I messed up Nigel I messed up -”

Higher and higher Adam’s voice rises until his breathing is uneven and his heart beats too quickly and his voice breaks and he sobs. Curling deeper into the blanket, he shrieks one loud note when Nigel reaches for him to pull him into his lap, before taking the chance and freeing his arms to wrap them tight around Nigel and hold on.

“There’s no one here,” Nigel tells him. He’s not certain of that, but his gun rests beside him on the floor should anyone make themselves seen through the doorway. Resting his back against the bed, he holds Adam close - blanket and all - and with warmth hushed against his brow, begins to rock him. “I’m here,” he says.

“It was so loud,” moans Adam, fingers tight enough in Nigel’s shirt collar that it softly strangles him. He twists his head to adjust, but allows it. Allows Adam’s tears to soak through to his skin. Allows him to shake, but not without a slow and steady rub against his back.

“Then we’ll just be quiet together.”

**Midnighters: Nigel fucks Adam in the chair in the closet.**

“I keep my promises, love,” Nigel says. He regards Adam with narrowed eyes and a look of delight as the other takes a deep breath in preparation for explaining why this is a monumentally bad idea. “I did say everywhere in the apartment. Every fucking room and that includes the fucking walk-in.”

“It’s impractical.”

“You said that when I had you up against the shower wall.”

“That was also impractical.”

“Your voice echoed beautifully, though, gorgeous.”

Adam blushes darker and regards their shared walk-in closet with contemplative resignation. There is that same electric tickle of anticipation that comes with Nigel suggesting something out of the ordinary for them to try. He is excited, and beyond his complaining he knows he will always feel his cheeks warm when he goes into the closet to get something to change.

Just as he does when he goes into any room of the house, now. He supposes that was the idea.

Only when Adam acquiesces, brow upraised and body bare - caught going for his clothes after a bath - does Nigel begin to question the logistics of this. He sets his hands to Adam’s hips to turn him, facing the built-in shelves. Muttering a curse to himself, he turns Adam back around again and catches his hand, pinning it above his head. Adam goes easily, limber and lithe, eyes traveling in twitchy lengths down Nigel’s body and back up again.

“No,” Nigel grunts. “Not this either.”

“Why not?”

“You’ll bang your back on the shelves,” Nigel mutters. “Maybe on the floor -”

“There isn’t room. Not for you, anyway.”

“Against the door?”

“That’s not technically in the closet.”

And then Nigel sees it, and as his grin widens, his cock thickens full. He turns to sit in the chair Adam keeps for putting on his shoes, and drags his angel into his lap, facing away from him. Work-roughened hands spread across Adam’s chest, peaking his nipples as his fingers brush past, languidly dragging his palms to brace Adam’s hips.

“There,” Nigel rumbles, kissing one of the notches of Adam’s spine. “This way I can see you take it.”

Adam squirms, familiar sensations and lovely teasing, and wriggles free of Nigel’s grip. Before the man can protest, he merely reaches for the door and pulls it partway closed, enough so that when he returns to sit comfortably against Nigel again, the corner of the mirror nor reflecting the bedroom beyond, reflects them.

“Now I can, too,” Adam says.

**SHOUTS. Hi lovelies ♥ I have a naughty prompt for Spacedogs if you're still doing them~ Nigel has been gone a while doing business and is incredibly frustrated, gets home and ambushes Adam while he's working, or something**

He tries to be good. He really fucking does. He tries to be content with the brisk kiss against his cheek and the arms up around his neck when he hugs Adam at his desk. He tries to be content with the brush of Adam’s nose and the whisper that he missed him - that he loves him. 

Nigel fucking tries, because honestly, if he had nothing else in the fucking world, those words would be enough. 

But after two weeks, three days, seventeen hours, and some bullshit amount of fucking minutes, Nigel’s stomach clenches like he’s taken a fucking boot to the belly with how goddamn horny he is. He jerked off plenty, whenever Adam video-chatted with him or started sending racy fucking pictures. But Nigel has never been a man satisfied by moderation, no. He doesn’t want a beer, he wants a fucking bottle of bourbon. He doesn’t want a bump, he wants fucking rails. And he doesn’t want to fuck his own hand when he could have Adam whimpering and squirming on his cock instead. 

“I missed you,” Nigel says again, hoping it doesn’t sound as fucking needy as he knows it does, even though Adam won’t hear it in him. He scoots nearer to the edge of the couch, hands fisted against his legs to stop from grabbing himself. 

“I know,” comes the easy answer, with a flutter of keys. “You said that.” 

“I mean, I really fucking missed you, gorgeous. Baby. Little sparrow, I missed you so much.” 

Adam’s smile is little and his eyes flick up to regard Nigel for just a second before he looks away, and there is really only so fucking much a single fucking man can fucking take. Nigel is out of the couch and behind Adam in what feels like half a fucking breath, and Adam squeaks, genuinely squeaks, when Nigel yanks the kid out of his seat. 

With a laugh, Adam allows himself to be dragged, kicking out and grabbing against Nigel’s arms as he holds him, squirming to feel the grip tighten, to feel Nigel growl against him so low he can’t even hear it. Adam plays along to their familiar game, wriggling free only to be caught again and tossed to bed, Nigel’s heavy form following quickly to pin him to bed. 

One wrist caught. The other. Both held above Adam’s head as he pants and arches beneath Nigel. 

“You really missed me?” 

“Yes.” 

“After two weeks, three days, seventeen hours and thirty-eight minutes?” 

"Yes, Adam, fuck.” 

“That’s twenty-five thousand, five-hundred and thirty-eight minutes. That’s a lot of minutes to catch up on.” 

“I swear to fucking Christ, Adam,” Nigel mutters, reaching down to unfasten his pants. “I’m going to make up every fucking one of them inside you.” 

****Midnighters prompt: Comedy - someone pisses off Nigel and he has to defend his HUSBAND. Obv this makes them both incredibly horny. Obv.** **

****Could I pleaase, have a possessive!nigel when someone threatens Adam for Spacedogs Week? xxx** **

****Midnighters au with Nigel being scarily possessive/protective of Adam. Like maybe they are strolling around and some macho neck beards throw slurs at them or otherwise try to harass Adam and Nigel steps in?** **

****Oh Im crazy to make a request so let me use this great oportunity!!! So... As you well know Im a slut for possessivnes, could you please write Adam going to a voluntary event in the comunity (cleaning the park, helping dog adoption, or food to homeless people) and Nigel decide to go too, but he always get in the way when Adam is trying to socialize with other peoples (they know about him being aspie and are all ok with it) by being territorial and wanting Adam only for himself? <3** **

****Hell yeah Spacedogs week! So, what do you say about another man hitting on Adam while the two of them were out and about?** **

“Darling, you will just make my morning if you give me a smile.” 

Adam startles, familiar words said in an unfamiliar accent, the tone and timbre entirely new as well. This isn’t Nigel, but on reflex Adam turns regardless, seeking quickly over the light eyes that regard him and the fluffy hair that falls in careful waves against his temples. One side is more silvered than the other, but as the man tilts his head it falls almost symmetrical and Adam finds himself smiling without even realizing he does. 

“Christ, and I didn’t think you could get any more beautiful.” 

Adam feels his cheeks pinken at the words, spoken so entirely truthfully, seemingly content to just float before Adam, not asking for anything in return but to be heard and believed. He parts his lips with the tip of his tongue and lets his eyes linger on the birthmark the man has against his neck, clearly visible but strangely suited to him. 

“Thank you,” Adam says, as he knows he should. “That’s very kind.” 

“I try to be polite,” the man says, his smile so wide that Adam can’t help but notice it. He accepts the hand the man holds out to him, shaking firm, and lifting a brow when the man doesn’t quite let him go. “What’s your name, darling?” 

“Adam!” Nigel’s voice snaps like sudden thunder through the morning peace. “I thought I’d fucking lost you, fucking wandering off -” His steps slow, fresh coffee in hand in a little blue and white cup. The rumble that follows his words belies the burgeoning annoyance as he sees the man standing far too close to Adam. Not only that. Holding his fucking hand. “Who the fuck is this, darling?” 

“He called me darling, too,” Adam smiles to Nigel. “I didn’t catch his name, though. We were just -” 

“We were just fucking what?” Nigel says, a step carrying him far too deep into the personal sphere of the man who has, since, dropped Adam’s hand. 

“Getting acquainted,” the man smiles, seemingly entirely unaffected by Nigel’s macho display. “I saw young Adam here and he was just striking. I had to say hello.” 

“You’ve fucking said it,” Nigel murmurs. 

“Nigel, you’re being rude.” 

“I believe he’s being protective,” the man corrects, tilting his head to regard Nigel as he seems to just loom over him. “And rightfully so. You are an enviable muse, dear Adam, to any creative spirit.” 

“And it’s going to remain fucking envy,” Nigel tells him. The man laughs, and Nigel only resists his fingers bending into a fist because of the cup in his hand. His other clenches instead. 

“That’s really up to Adam, isn’t it?” 

“No,” Nigel tells him. “Not really, it’s not.” 

“Nigel,” Adam says, his heart beating faster. 

“Nigel, is it?” 

The man extends his hand and Nigel switches his coffee over, reaching out to shake. And squeeze. And twist until he feels bones bend together, hinged wrong and at the point of cracking as the man gasps. 

“Don’t ever,” Nigel snarls, “don’t fucking ever touch him again.” 

The man just looks at him, eyes wide from pain and surprise, and incrementally nods his head. It takes a moment, then another moment more, and Nigel lets go of the hapless man’s hand. It immediately disappears into his pockets and Adam frowns, looking between them. 

“It was, in truth, an effortlessly educational meeting,” the man says, smile still there on his face but weaker now, eyes darting to Nigel more than settling on Adam, who stands with furrowed brows next to his partner. “I wish you both a very good day.” 

“I didn’t hear your name,” Adam calls after him, as the man lifts his hand behind himself and then cradles it against his chest. 

It isn’t broken. Nigel regrets that. But he watches the man grow smaller and smaller as he walks off into the park, and only when he’s out of sight does Nigel turn back to the slender hand curled against his jacket. 

“What the fuck,” Nigel mutters, spreading his hand against Adam’s cheek to draw him into a fierce kiss. It’s more than they should share in public. It’s more than Nigel normally would, being wary of observers, but he parts his lips and forces his tongue past Adam’s in turn, bearing down on him to make Adam his once more. 

****Hello! First of all, thank you so much for creating my new Bible — The Midnighters! ♡♡♡ I'd like to suggest an idea for the Spacedogs week: could you write about Nigel cooking smth for Adam and feeding him?… or maybe the other way round** **

To say that Adam is a picky eater is an understatement. Adam is more than picky - he’s exacting. Precise. Consistent to a degree that never fails to knit Nigel’s brows when he opens the cabinets and sees the same damn boxes of cereal in rows according to expiration date, beside the same goddamn boxes of macaroni and cheese. 

With an accompaniment of clicking keys, Nigel makes the macaroni. He makes the same goddamn meal that Adam eats every night. But when he calls him to the table, he’s still cooking, and Adam watches as Nigel goes from counter to refrigerator, refrigerator to counter, counter to oven. 

It’s like a dance, planned and rehearsed, and Adam sits quietly watching the muscles move in Nigel’s back, strong and taut and powerful, muscles he knows by touch and skin he knows by taste. He can smell the familiar dinner, already happy to be home for it, knowing it will be creamy because Nigel knows how the make the fake cheese taste good, that it will have a crispy top if he put it in the oven for a little while to grill. 

“What are you adding?” He asks, sitting up in his seat and frowning when Nigel deliberately moves to cover his view. 

“You’ll see,” Nigel answers, and Adam straightens in his chair. 

“Are you adding something?” 

“Yes.” 

“What is it?” 

“You’ll fucking see, angel.” 

“But I might not like it,” Adam protests. 

Nigel says nothing to this, because it’s entirely true. Adam may hate what he’s doing, he may not even fucking taste it. But he pushes a kiss against Adam’s brow in passing and continues on. Bit by bit, the table is set, as ever, but with every piece that comes into place, Adam’s breath is a little shorter. Finally, when there’s a protest perched on his lips, Adam parts them and finds Nigel’s finger placed against his mouth. 

“Close your eyes,” Nigel tells him. “Open your mouth.” 

Adam’s brow furrows and he glares at Nigel for a moment before huffing a breath and closing his eyes, obediently opening his mouth next. He hears Nigel shift around before his fingers gently hold against Adam’s chin and he feels a fork placed against his tongue with a morsel of food on it. It’s hot but not painful, and Adam closes his lips around the utensil as Nigel pulls it free. 

The taste isn’t remarkably different, sharper perhaps, a little stronger, and there is a crunch that wasn’t there before that Adam finds he really likes. He chews, slowly, deliberately, and when he swallows he opens his mouth and finds he wants more immediately. 

Nigel just grins at him where he stands, tilting his head and cupping Adam’s cheek. 

“There you go, little sparrow. Something new in something safe.” 

“What is it?” 

“Bacon,” Nigel tells him, standing up fully to start spooning the meal into bowls for them. “And a garlic-crumb crust. On your favourite mac and fucking cheese.” 

Adam’s smile widens and he touches his fingers to his lips, just where Nigel touched before to gently quiet him. Arching a brow, Nigel settles into a chair tugged closer, and he forks another few macaronis, making sure there’s a bit of crust and a bit of bacon along with. And when Adam opens his mouth, Nigel feeds him again, leaning in to meet his lips in a gentle, lingering kiss as Adam chews. 

“I told you,” Nigel murmurs, grinning crooked. “Trust me, darling.” 


End file.
